criterion

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English

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Alternative forms

Etymology

From New Latin criterion, from Ancient Greek κριτήριον (kritḗrion, a test, a means of judging), from κριτής (kritḗs, judge), from κρίνω (krínō, to judge); see critic.

Pronunciation

Noun

criterion (plural criteria)

  1. A standard, test, or requirement by which individual things or people may be compared and judged.
    Near-synonym: benchmark
    criterion of choice, of decision, of selection
    • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXVII, in Francesca Carrara. , volume I, London: Richard Bentley, , (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 310:
      Knowledge has come to her too soon—knowledge of evil, unqualified by the general charities which longer experience infallibly brings; but her age has lent its own freshness to this first great emotion; it becomes unconsciously a criterion, and the judgment is harsh, because the remembrance is bitter.
    • 1986, Piotr Buczkowski, Andrzej Klawiter, editors, Theories of Ideology and Ideology of Theories, Rodopi, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 57:
      The Enlightment worldview, which considered the order of "Nature" as a basis and, at the same time, the subject of explorations of scientific natural sciences, has, at the same time, considered this order as a criterion of the artistically-aesthetic qualities of art. From an "ideological" point of view, it liberated art from its feudal religious and courtly servitude.
    • 2013 November 30, Paul Davis, “Letters: Say it as simply as possible”, in The Economist, volume 409, number 8864:
      Congratulations on managing to use the phrase “preponderant criterion” in a chart (“On your marks”, November 9th). Was this the work of a kakorrhaphiophobic journalist set a challenge by his colleagues, or simply an example of glossolalia?

Usage notes

  • The plural form criterions also exists, but is much less common.
  • The form criteria is sometimes used as a nonstandard singular form (as in a criteria, this criteria, and so on), with corresponding plural form criterias. In this use, it sometimes means “a single criterion”, sometimes “a set of criteria”.

Derived terms

Translations

Further reading

Anagrams

Latin

Etymology

From Ancient Greek κριτήριον (kritḗrion).

Pronunciation

Noun

criterion n (genitive criteriī); second declension

  1. criterion

Declension

Second-declension noun (neuter, Greek-type).

Descendants