crucial
adjective
[ ˈkruːʃ(ə)l ]
• decisive or critical, especially in the success or failure of something.
• "negotiations were at a crucial stage"
Similar:
pivotal,
critical,
key,
climacteric,
decisive,
deciding,
determining,
settling,
testing,
trying,
searching,
major,
significant,
influential,
momentous,
consequential,
weighty,
big,
important,
historic,
epoch-making,
far-reaching,
life-and-death,
Origin:
early 18th century (in the sense ‘cross-shaped’): from French, from Latin crux, cruc- ‘cross’. The sense ‘decisive’ is from Francis Bacon's Latin phrase instantia crucis ‘crucial instance’, which he explained as a metaphor from a crux or fingerpost marking a fork at a crossroad; Newton and Boyle took up the metaphor in experimentum crucis ‘crucial experiment’.
