crucial

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Extremely important because it affects how something will turn out.

   Getting enough sleep is crucial before an important exam.

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Simplified etymology

Crucial comes from Latin crux, “cross,” and originally meant “cross-shaped,” especially in technical and anatomical use. Its sense “decisive” or “very important” developed from Francis Bacon’s early 17th-century phrase instantia crucis, which invoked a signpost at a crossroads where a choice of direction must be made.

1706, from French crucial, a medical term for ligaments of the knee (which cross each other), from Latin crux, crucis (“cross”) (English crux), from the Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to turn, to bend”). The meaning “decisive, critical” is extended from a logical term, Instantias Crucis, adopted by Francis Bacon in his influential Novum Organum (1620); the notion is of cross fingerboard signposts at forking roads, thus a requirement to choose.

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