Tham khảo tài liệu 'penguin dictionary of american english usage and style_3', ngoại ngữ, anh ngữ phổ thông phục vụ nhu cầu học tập, nghiên cứu và làm việc hiệu quả | custom 89 1. Concerning crises A mayor was shot in Japan and a story in a New York newspaper included this sentence The Mayor Hitoshi Motoshima was reported in critical condition but out of danger tonight after two hours of surgery. If he was in critical condition how could he be out of danger at the same time Critical in such a context normally means dangerous it pertains to a crisis a crucial point when the course of a dis-ease or anything else can turn in either a favorable or an unfavorable direction. Could the report have lost something in translation 2. Concerning criticism etc. Critical adjective has an assortment of other meanings among them crucial decisive perilous and referring to important products or materials that are in short supply. In the sense of judging critical is not necessarily negative. It can mean characterized by careful and objective judgment or it can pertain to formal criticism. Popularly it is more often construed as judging unfavorably or inclined to judge unfavorably. A Nevada newspaper ran the headline Man is critical after car goes into canal. The text beneath it indicated that the only person in the car was a woman. Maybe that critical man was the owner. See also CONDITION. CRY. See -Y ending. CULMINATE. To culminate means to reach the highest point or the climax of something. How not to use this verb is illustrated by a press excerpt. The razing of the International Hotel . . . culminated a crisis that eventually touched virtually every agency. Change culminate to ended. The example is wrong on two scores To culminate does not mean to end or to be the outcome. Moreover it is an intransitive verb not transitive one does not culminate something. Although culminate d does belong in the sentence below the preposition that follows it is not idiomatic. . A growing body of scientific evidence on the dangers of so-called secondhand smoke has culminated with an influential Environmental Protection Agency report declaring environmental .
