All 5 Uses of
critical
in
The Screwtape Letters
- I assume that the creature has been through several of them before—they all have—and that he always feels superior and patronising to the ones he has emerged from, not because he has really criticised them but simply because they are in the past.†
Chpt 9 *criticised = gave an opinion of what was wrong with somethingunconventional spelling: This is a British spelling. Americans spell this criticized.
- What He wants of the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise—does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going.†
Chpt 16uncritical = not finding faultstandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in uncritical means not and reverses the meaning of critical. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- If he is a big enough fool you can get him to realise the character of the friends only while they are absent; their presence can be made to sweep away all criticism.†
Chpt 10
- What He wants of the layman in church is an attitude which may, indeed, be critical in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful, but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise—does not waste time in thinking about what it rejects, but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment that is going.†
Chpt 16 *
- He asks who influenced the ancient writer, and how far the statement is consistent with what he said in other books, and what phase in the writer's development, or in the general history of thought, it illustrates, and how it affected later writers, and how often it has been misunderstood (specially by the learned man's own colleagues) and what the general course of criticism on it has been for the last ten years, and what is the "present state of the question".†
Chpt 27
Definitions:
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(1)
(critical as in: a critical problem) important, serious, or dangerous
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(2)
(critical as in: don't be so critical) finding fault and telling others; or tending to have unfavorable opinions
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(3)
(critical as in: critical acclaim) relating to careful analysis or thoughtful judgement of what is good and bad about something -- possibly from people whose job is to share their expert opinions in a given industry
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(4)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
See a comprehensive dictionary for more specialized senses of critical including those in mathematics and nuclear energy.