critical

in a sentence

grouped by contextual meaning

Ants play a critical role in the ecosystem.

She plays a critical role in the administration.

It was a critical factor in my decision.

The legislation funds critical infrastructure.

Don't mention it, he added, feeling hypercritical and a little disgusted again.†  (source) James Agee, A Death in the Family, 1957

I look more critically at the design on Peeta's arm.  (source) Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, 2008

The once sleek lines were now a jagged mess of missing hull segments and empty anchor points where noncritical components used to be.†  (source) Andy Weir, The Martian, 2011

And whenever we faced a critical matter such as this, we designed redundant systems.  (source) Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park, 1993

Maybe hypercritical too, like her mom was hypercritical.†  (source) Tommy Orange, There There, 2018

Half her work in the UK was moving critically ill children, the other half was treating them in intensive care.  (source) Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala, 2013

Later the doctors would speculate that when Dad, Luke and Benjamin had wrestled Shawn to the ground—and he'd sustained a concussion—he was already in critical condition.  (source) Tara Westover, Educated, 2018

Maybe hypercritical too, like her mom was hypercritical.†  (source) Tommy Orange, There There, 2018

Law school had seemed abstract and disconnected before, but after meeting the desperate and imprisoned, it all became relevant and critically important.  (source) Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy, 2014

She is very critical of the administration.

The comment prompted a twiterstorm of criticism.

"John was very self-critical, always analyzing himself," Brady recalls.  (source) Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, 1996

Especially because this time if we lose there won't be any criticism of us at all.  (source) Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game, 1977

Despite the fact that I have left my old faction behind, I don't want to criticize it yet.  (source) Veronica Roth, Divergent, 2011

She never criticized me, but loved me as only a father's sister could.†  (source) Firoozeh Dumas, Funny in Farsi, 2003

She wasn't comparing. Or criticizing.  (source) Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, 1999

I tried to anticipate what criticisms she would have.†  (source) Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club, 1989

"It's too easy," I said, "to criticise when you're just driving by."†  (source) Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go, 2005

I can still see her as a brightly-dressed little thing constantly dashing hither and thither at a staggering run, clasping an atrociously cross-eyed doll which she loved with uncritical passion.†  (source) John Wyndham, The Chrysalids, 1955

containing the food, the napkins which covered it) from which she never washed but returned soiled to the empty basket and set the basket back on the same step where she had found it as if to carry completely out the illusion that it had never existed or at least that she had never touched, emptied, it, had not come out and taken the basket up with that air which had nothing whatever of furtiveness in it nor even defiance, who doubtless tasted the food, criticised its quality or cooking, chewed and swallowed it and felt it digest yet still clung to that delusion, that calm incorrigible insistence that that which all incontrovertible evidence tells her is so does not exist, as women can;†  (source) William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!, 1936

Of the three of us, Margot would be the most critical.  (source) Jenny Han, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, 2014

The general, whom the boys knew as the commander of their division, looked at the other officer and spoke coolly, as if he were criticising his clothes.†  (source) Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage, 1894

The film received critical and commercial success.

It was quite a small book, after all, and hardly best-seller material; and although well received in critical circles in New York and London, it didn't make much of a splash up here, not initially.  (source) Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin, 2000

Marina looked at the Count in triumph; then turning back to Sofia, she tilted her head and studied her handiwork with a more critical eye.  (source) Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow, 2016

Grant came over, and peered critically at the creature.  (source) Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park, 1993

Under the Indian's critical eye, Matt shaved down the branch, paring off the thinnest possible shavings.  (source) Elizabeth George Speare, The Sign of the Beaver, 1983

The kind of mind that works its way through undergraduate and then graduate classes in literature and criticism has a predisposition to see things as existing in themselves while simultaneously also representing something else.  (source) Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, 2003

She holds up her drawing, eyeing it critically.  (source) Katherine Applegate, The One and Only Ivan, 2012

I've changed quite drastically, everything about me is different: my opinions, ideas, critical outlook.  (source) Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, 1952

When Virginia Woolf writes about women of her time only being permitted a certain range of activities, we do her and ourselves a great disservice by not seeing the social criticism involved.  (source) Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, 2003

Tonks paused at his open wardrobe to look critically at her reflection in the mirror on the inside of the door.  (source) J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, 2003

Holding his breath he cocked a critical ear at the sounds of the island.  (source) William Golding, Lord of the Flies, 1954

Maybe it was the new dress that made me look more critically at myself than usual: 45 years old, unmarried, waistline long since vanished.  (source) Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place, 1971

Everything was so strange, so brilliant, so bewildering—the rows of ladies in evening dress, the critical faces, the whole atmosphere of wealth and culture about her.  (source) Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne Of Green Gables, 1908