crucial

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   having crucial relevance

   crucial to the case

2. 2
   adj

   Essential or decisive for determining the outcome or future of something; extremely important; vital.

   The battle of Tali-Ihantala in 1944 is one of the crucial moments in the history of Finland.

3. 3
   adj

   Very good; excellent; particularly applied to reggae music.

   Delbert Wilkins is the most crucial pirate radio DJ in Brixton.

4. 4
   adj

   of extreme importance

5. 5
   adj

   of the greatest importance

6. 6
   adj

   Cruciform or cruciate; cross-shaped.

Etymology

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.