critical

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“
NASA won't even know for certain if a mission with Dextre or any other robot is technically feasible until the agency completes what it calls a critical design review.

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Definitions (35)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (12)

  1. adjective Inclined to judge severely and find fault.
  2. adjective Characterized by careful, exact evaluation and judgment: a critical reading.
  3. adjective Of, relating to, or characteristic of critics or criticism: critical acclaim; a critical analysis of Melville's writings.
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Examples (50)

  • They and some senior Whitehall officials have suggested the threat level was close to being raised to its highest - "critical" - in recent months. —  The Guardian World News
  • Unfortunately there has been an increasing number of security incidents where FTP was identified as a critical factor. —  TechWeb
  • The lowest risk level required under USP 797 for a critical area is an ISO Class 5 area designation.
  • And while Obama has listed education as a critical issue, I feel like breaking into tears Meryl Streep-style because I have doubts. —  UCLA Stories
  • In the study, the liver-expressed gene, SR-BI, was identified as a critical host factor for the liver infection stage of malaria using a systematic RNAi screen of known lipoprotein pathway components in a cultured human cell-based infection assay. —  innovations-report
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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
 

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/ˈkrɪtɪkəl/
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