Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A petty or inferior critic.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An inferior or incompetent critic; a petty censurer.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A contemptible or vicious critic.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A petty or charlatan critic.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[critic + Latin -aster, pejorative suff.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

critic +‎ -aster

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Examples

  • Shakespeare's plays are so corrupt, any criticaster has good leave to expunge or expand at will, under a roving commission to hack and hew wheresoever and howsoever it may please him, under the plea of restoring the text.

    Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 17, No. 099, March, 1876 Various

  • The case against Mr. Taylor as a criticaster is clinched by the fact that his cause is espoused by

    Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) William Henry Hurlbert 1861

  • "A.strange perversion of facts," cries the sapient criticaster, with that normal amenity which has won for him such honour and troops of unfriends: when his name was proposed as secretary to the R.A. S., all prophesied the speediest dissolution of that infirm body.

    Arabian nights. English Anonymous 1855

  • After Dutch film maker and Islam criticaster Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Jihadist in the streets of Amsterdam, he was of the opinion that blasphemy should no longer be a dead letter, and a few years later he even said the Netherlands should introduce Sharia law if a two third majority would support it.

    RenewAmerica 2009

  • After Dutch film maker and Islam criticaster Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Jihadist in the streets of Amsterdam, he was of the opinion that blasphemy should no longer be a dead letter, and a few years later he even said the Netherlands should introduce Sharia law if a two third majority would support it.

    Israelated - English Israel blogs 2009

  • What amount of obtuseness will disqualify a criticaster who itches to be tinkering and cobbling the noblest passages of thought that ever issued from mortal brain, while at the same time he stumbles and bungles in sentences of that simplicity and grammatical clearness, as not to tax the powers of a third-form schoolboy to explain? [

    Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. Various 1852

Comments

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  • An inferior or petty critic.

    May 12, 2008

  • JM doesn't know much about criticasters but what he knows he doesn't like!

    March 10, 2010