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The art of criticism. [Written also critic.] [R.]

It is the trochilos of ancient writers. -- Crocodile tears, false or affected tears; hypocritical sorrow; -- derived from the fiction of old travelers, that crocodiles shed tears over their prey.

) To damage or destroy; to injure; to wound; as, to cut up a book or its author by severe criticism. "This doctrine cuts up all government by the roots." Locke. (c) To afflict; to discourage; to demoralize; as, the death of his friend cut him up terribly. [Colloq.] Thackeray.

ng, by open expression, as by denuciation, hissing, hooting, etc. You are not so arrant a critic as to damn them [the works of modern poets] . . . without hearing. Pope. Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer. Pope.

Serving to determine; critical. "The critical or decretory days." Sir T. Browne.

Nice and refined perception and discrimination; critical niceness; fastidious accuracy. That Augustan delicacy of taste which is the boast of the great public schools of England. Macaulay.

Requiring careful handling; not to be rudely or hastily dealt with; nice; critical; as, a delicate subject or question. There are some things too delicate and too sacred to be handled rudely without injury to truth. F. W. Robertson.

The islands of Guernsey and Jersey are at present the great depots of this kingdom. Brit Critic (1794).

Detraction; depreciation. [Obs.] To stubborn critics, apt, without a theme, For depravation. Shak.

To take credit or reputation from; to defame. That calumnious critic . . . Detracting what laboriously we do. Drayton.

Critical perception or scrutiny; judgment based on such scrutiny; esp., perception pf, or judgment concerning, motives and character. The quick eye for effects, the clear diagnosis of men's minds, and the love of epigram. Compton Reade. My diagnosis of his character proved correct. J. Payn. Differential diagnosis (Med.…

An authoritative statement; a dogmatic saying; an apothegm. A class of critical dicta everywhere current. M. Arnold.

The writer of a treatise or dissertation. Philologers and critical discoursers. Sir T. Browne.

To analyze, for the purposes of science or criticism; to divide and examine minutely. This paragraph . . . I have dissected for a sample. Atterbury.

Fig.: The act of separating or dividing for the purpose of critical examination.

That dissembles; hypocritical; false. -- Dis*sem"bling*ly, adv.

and authoritatively; positive; magisterial; hence, arrogantly authoritative; overbearing. Critics write in a positive, dogmatic way. Spectator. [They] are as assertive and dogmatical as if they were omniscient. Glanvill. Dogmatic theology. Same as Dogmatics.

Deceitful; hypocritical; treacherous. Milton.

rrect; esp., to make corrections in (a literary work); to alter for the better by textual criticism, generally verbal.

Alteration by editorial criticism, as of a text so as to give a better reading; removal of errors or corruptions from a document; as, the book might be improved by judicious emendations.