criterion

• criteria (nonstandard)
• criterium

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.

• IPA^(key): /kɹaɪˈtɪəɹi.ən/, /kɹɪˈtɪəɹi.ən/

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• Rhymes: -ɪɹiən

criterion (plural criteria)

1. A standard or test by which individual things or people may be compared and judged.

   Criterion of choice, of decision, of selection

   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), OCLC 630079698, 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 0303-8157, 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?

• 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”.

• criterial
• crisis
• critic
• criticize
• critical

• criterion in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• criterion in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911

• tricerion

From Ancient Greek κριτήριον (kritḗrion).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /kriˈte.ri.on/, [krɪˈt̪ɛriɔn]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /kriˈte.ri.on/, [kriˈt̪ɛːrion]

criterion n (genitive criteriī); second declension

1. criterion

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

• → Catalan: criteri
• → Dutch: criterium
• → English: criterion
• → German: Kriterium
• → Italian: criterio
• → Sicilian: critèriu
• → Spanish: criterio