Definitions

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

  • noun The act of criticizing, especially adversely.
  • noun A critical comment or judgment.
  • noun The practice of analyzing, classifying, interpreting, or evaluating literary or other artistic works.
  • noun A critical article or essay; a critique.
  • noun The investigation of the origin and history of literary documents; textual criticism.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The art of judging of and defining the qualities or merits of a thing, especially of a literary or artistic work: as, the rules of criticism.
  • noun The act of criticizing; discrimination or discussion of merit, character, or quality; the exercise or application of critical judgment.
  • noun In a restricted sense, inquiry into the origin, history, authenticity, character, etc., of literary documents. Higher criticism concerns writings as a whole; lower criticism concerns the integrity or character of particular parts or passages.
  • noun A critical judgment; especially, a detailed critical examination or disquisition; a critique.
  • noun The critical or Kantian philosophy (which see, under critical).

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

  • noun The rules and principles which regulate the practice of the critic; the art of judging with knowledge and propriety of the beauties and faults of a literary performance, or of a production in the fine arts.
  • noun The act of criticising; a critical judgment passed or expressed; a critical observation or detailed examination and review; a critique; animadversion; censure.

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

  • noun The act of criticising; a critical judgment passed or expressed; a critical observation or detailed examination and review; a critique; animadversion; censure.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a written evaluation of a work of literature
  • noun disapproval expressed by pointing out faults or shortcomings
  • noun a serious examination and judgment of something

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

critic +‎ -ism

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Examples

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  • "Criticism of other people is at heart a survival technique."

    --Jan Cox

    June 6, 2007