criterion

Etymology

From New Latin criterion, from Ancient Greek κριτήριον (kritḗrion, “a test, a means of judging”), from κριτής (kritḗs, “judge”), from κρίνω (krínō, “to judge”); see critic.

noun

1. A standard or test by which individual things or people may be compared and judged.
   Criterion of choice, of decision, of selection
   The Enlightment worldview, which considered the order of "Nature" as a basis and, at the same time, the subject of explorations of scientific natural sciences, has, at the same time, considered this order as a criterion of the artistically-aesthetic qualities of art. From an "ideological" point of view, it liberated art from its feudal religious and courtly servitude. 1986, Piotr Buczkowski, Andrzej Klawiter, editors, Theories of Ideology and Ideology of Theories, Rodopi, →ISSN, page 57
   Congratulations on managing to use the phrase “preponderant criterion” in a chart (“On your marks”, November 9th). Was this the work of a kakorrhaphiophobic journalist set a challenge by his colleagues, or simply an example of glossolalia? 30 November 2013, Paul Davis, “Letters: Say it as simply as possible”, in The Economist, volume 409, number 8864