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Marginal vs Critical - What's the difference?

marginal | critical |

As adjectives the difference between marginal and critical

is that marginal is of, relating to, or located at or near a margin or edge; also figurative usages of location and margin (edge) while critical is inclined to find fault or criticize; fastidious; captious; censorious; exacting.

As nouns the difference between marginal and critical

is that marginal is something that is marginal while critical is a critical value, factor, etc.

marginal

English

Adjective

(en-adj)
  • (uncomparable) Of, relating to, or located at or near a margin or edge; also figurative usages of location and margin (edge) .
  • The marginal area at the edge of the salt-marsh has its own plants.
    In recent years there has been an increase in violence against marginal groups.
  • # Written in the margin of a book.
  • There were more marginal notes than text.
  • #* 1999 , R. I. Page, Introduction to English Runes , Boydell Press, page 198:
  • The early pages had marginal notes most of which were lost when rats nibbled away the manuscript edges.
  • # (geography) Sharing a border; geographically adjacent.
  • Monmouthshire is a Welsh county marginal to England.
  • (comparable) Determined by a small margin; having a salient characteristic determined by a small margin.
  • # Of a value, or having a characteristic that is of a value, that is close to being unacceptable or leading to exclusion from a group or category.
  • His writing ability was marginal at best.
  • ''Having reviewed the test, there are two students below the required standard and three more who are marginal .
  • # (of land) Barely productive.
  • He farmed his marginal land with difficulty.
  • # (politics, chiefly, UK, Australia, NZ, of a constituency) Subject to a change in sitting member with only a small change in voting behaviour, this usually being inferred from the small winning margin of the previous election.
  • In Bristol West, Labour had a majority of only 1,000, so the seat is considered highly marginal this time around.
  • #* 2002 , Andrew Geddes, Jonathan Tonge, Labour?s Second Landslide: The British General Election 2001 , page 79,
  • In ‘battleground’ seats with the Conservatives, Liberal Democrat vote shares increased most in the most marginal seats.
  • #* 2007 , Robert Waller, Byron Criddle, The Almanac of British Politics , page 58,
  • In Outer London, Harrow East is now a more marginal Labour hold than Harrow West.
  • #* 2010 , Nick Economou, Zareh Ghazarian, Australian Politics For Dummies , unnumbered page,
  • The pendulum lists the seats from least marginal' to most '''marginal''' for the government on one side, and least '''marginal''' to most ' marginal for the opposition on the other side.
  • (economics, uncomparable) Pertaining to changes resulting from a unit increase in production or consumption of a good.
  • Derived terms

    * comarginal * marginal cost * marginal utility * postmarginal * submarginal

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Something that is .
  • A constituency won with a small margin.
  • Anagrams

    * ----

    critical

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Inclined to find fault or criticize; fastidious; captious; censorious; exacting.
  • :
  • Pertaining to, or indicating, a crisis or turning point.
  • :
  • *
  • *:Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability:it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off.
  • Extremely important.
  • :
  • *{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=September-October, author= Katie L. Burke
  • , magazine=(American Scientist), title= In the News , passage=Oxygen levels on Earth skyrocketed 2.4 billion years ago, when cyanobacteria evolved photosynthesis:
  • Relating to criticism or careful analysis, such as literary or film criticism.
  • :
  • (lb) Of a patient condition involving unstable vital signs and a prognosis that predicts the condition could worsen; or, a patient condition that requires urgent treatment in an intensive care or critical care medical facility.
  • :
  • Likely to go out of control if disturbed, that is, opposite of stable.
  • :
  • Of the point (in temperature, reagent concentration etc.) where a nuclear or chemical reaction becomes self-sustaining.
  • :
  • Derived terms

    {{der3, criticality , critically , criticalness , critical angle , critical mass , critical point , critical thinking , mission-critical , pseudocritical , supercritical}}

    See also

    * (wikipedia "critical") * (Medical state)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A critical value, factor, etc.
  • * 1976 , American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Journal of engineering for industry (volume 98, page 508)
  • The second undamped system criticals show a greater percentage depression than the first.
  • * 2008 , John J. Coyle, C. John Langley, Brian Gibson, Supply Chain Management: A Logistics Perspective (page 564)
  • Finally, criticals are high-risk, high-value items that give the final product a competitive advantage in the marketplace Criticals, in part, determine the customer's ultimate cost of using the finished product — in our example, the computer.