# criterion
## English
### Alternative forms

* criteria (nonstandard)
* criterium

### 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

* IPA: /kɹɪˈtɪəɹi.ən/
* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /kɹaɪˈtɪə.ɹi.ən/
* (General American) IPA: /kɹaɪˈtɪɹ.i.ən/
** Audio (US):(file)
* Rhymes: -ɪɹiən

### Noun

criterion (plural criteria or (rare) criterions)
* 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

* Akaike information criterion
* bicriterion
* Bradford Hill criteria
* Conway criterion
* criteriology
* criterionless
* criterion of embarrassment
* criterion of verifiability
* criterion of verification
* Euler's criterion
* Feighner criterion
* Kaldor-Hicks criterion
* Kelly criterion
* Lawson comfort criterion
* Lawson criterion
* Li's criterion
* metacriterion
* multicriterion
* noncriterion
* subcriterion
* Sylvester's criterion
* tricriterion
* verifiability criterion
* verification criterion

#### Related terms

* criterial
* crisis
* critic
* criticize
* critical

#### Further reading

* criterion on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* “criterion”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
* William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “criterion”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.

### Anagrams

* tricerion

## Latin
### Etymology

From Ancient Greek κριτήριον (kritḗrion).

### Pronunciation

* (Classical Latin) IPA: /kriˈte.ri.on/, [krɪˈt̪ɛriɔn]
* (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA: /kriˈte.ri.on/, [kriˈt̪ɛːrion]

### Noun

criterion n (genitive criteriī); second declension
* criterion

#### Declension

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

#### Descendants

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