critical

Definitions

• Inclined to find fault or criticize
• Pertaining to, or indicating, a crisis or turning point.
• Extremely important.
• Relating to criticism or careful analysis, such as literary or film criticism.
• (medicine) 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.
• (physics) Of the point (in temperature, reagent concentration etc.) where a nuclear nuclear or chemical reaction becomes self-sustaining.
• (physics) Of a temperature that is equal to the temperature of the critical point of a substance, i.e. the temperature above which the substance cannot be liquefied.