Q: I see the verb “critique” used all the time in place of what I believe is the correct word—“criticize.” I thought “critique” meant to analyze the pros and cons, not to express disapproval.
A: Yes, the verb “critique” does indeed mean to analyze or evaluate, though it’s sometimes used in the sense of “criticize”—to find fault with.
Standard dictionaries don’t recognize the fault-finding sense, but the Oxford English Dictionary, an etymological reference, notes that the verb “critique” is used “(sometimes) to express a harsh or unfavourable opinion of (a person or thing).”
Interestingly, “criticize” once meant to analyze as well as find fault with, but the analytical sense is now obsolete. The OED says both “criticize” and “critique” ultimately come from ancient Greek terms having to do with literary criticism.
The verb “criticize” is derived from the noun “critic,” which ultimately comes from the Greek κριτικός, a literary critic. (The OED notes that κριτικός, an adjective meaning able to discern, is used substantively here as a noun meaning a literary critic.)
The verb “critique” is derived from the noun “critique,” which ultimately comes from ἡ κριτική (short for ἡ κριτικὴ τέχνη, the critical art).
When the noun “critic” (source of “criticize”) first appeared in early modern English in the late 16th century, Oxford says, it meant “a person who analyses, evaluates, and comments on literary texts; spec. a person skilled in textual or biblical criticism.”
The dictionary’s first citation is from A Defence of the Gouernment Established in the Church of Englande for Ecclesiasticall Matters (1587), by John Bridges, Dean of Salisbury and later Bishop of Oxford:
“You woulde haue sayde, hee had beene Longinus the Critike (or one that giues his iudgement against euery body) and a Censor (or Master Controller) of the Romayne eloquence.”
When “criticize” first appeared in the early 17th century, the OED says, it had two senses:
(1) “to pass judgement on a person or thing; esp. to express a harsh or unfavourable opinion,” and (2) “to analyse, evaluate, and comment on something, esp. a literary text or other creative work; to subject something to critical analysis.” Oxford labels the second sense obsolete.
Both meanings of “criticize” were first used in the same work. Here are Oxford’s earliest examples of the two senses, from Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621):
(1) “Goe now censure, criticize, scoffe and raile.” (2) “If a rigid censurer should criticize on this which I haue writ, he should not find three faults as Scaliger in Terence, but 300.”
(The second citation refers to the Renaissance scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger’s comment in Poetices Libri Septem [Seven Books of Poetics, 1561] that ancient scholars found three faults in Terence’s plays, but the faults were theirs, not his: “illis potius quam ei sunt oneri” [“they are burdens to them rather than to him”].)
As for the noun “critique” (source of the verb “critique”), the OED says it first meant “a piece of writing or other review in which a text, creative work, subject, etc., is analysed or evaluated.”
The earliest example we’ve found is from The Nature of Truth (1641), by the English statesman and military officer Robert Greville, Second Baron Brooke. In the work, which originated as a letter to a friend, Greville says people should not be forced to worship against their beliefs:
“When ’twas first VVrot, ’twas intended but a Letter to a private Friend, (not a Critick;) and since its first writing, and sending, twas never so much as perused, much lesse, refined, by its Noble Author.”
The verb “critique” followed a century later, the OED says, when it meant “to analyse, evaluate, and comment on (a literary text, creative work, etc.).” The dictionary’s first citation, which we’ve expanded, is from a novel, narrated by a lapdog, that satirizes 18th-century culture:
“the worst ribaldry of Aristophanes, shall be critiqued and commented on by men, who turn up their noses at Gulliver or JosephAndrews” (from The History of Pompey the Little: or, the Life and Adventures of a Lap-Dog, 1752, by Francis Coventry).
In the 20th century, the OED says, the verb “critique” took on additional senses that include the one you’re asking about: “To make a critical assessment of (a person’s performance, actions, etc.); (sometimes) to express a harsh or unfavourable opinion of (a person or thing).”
The first Oxford example refers to making a critical assessment of students: “All student practice is critiqued in a constructive manner” (from The Journal of Higher Education, 1950).
Finally, here’s an OED example where the verb “critique” is being used clearly to mean find fault with: “He was by no means perfect, and this column has often critiqued his excesses” (from The Times, London, Feb. 1, 2016).
But as we noted above, standard dictionaries haven’t yet recognized this expanded usage.
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