Yeas I believe I do have same concept in Estonian too.. Although I don't know. I did not enjoy school very much.
Don't want to argue, but I think that stable patients who have high potential to become unstable, would still be counted as critical, therefore they would be observed by nurses for 24h. They are just less critical than the unstable ones who may die and require doctors to assemble(in case of tv. serial to scramble). Thus critical shall be gradable.
Yes I'm actually glad that this rule can make something so not amusing as dead into something amusing. :)
Yes I knew what the critical mean here, but I had no idea that it's non gradable.
In my personal opinion grading adjectives to gradable and non gradable seems little unreasonable anyways. I don't see anything wrong with such expression like "very dead". It's amusing. And in some situation, when the word dead is used for something inanimate, like a engine of a car, or something. It could be gradable. Since some dead machine u can still bring to life.. While some u can't and some may be possible to bring alive but it's more trouble.
Other thing of course is whether a newspaper's editor should pass something that's not correct English.
But to me critical seems gradable. Since that seems convenient. Example if I had 3 different critical situations in hand. Then I would want to grade them, because I need to chose which one to deal with first. If you had 5 critical patients in hospital 4 of them were stable one amongst them, is better than others. And then the fifth ones is unstable, he's most critical the doctors have to deal with him asap, otherwise he might die.
I can't see anyway how could "critical" be not gradable.
Good point Hardi, but you may be thinking of "critical" in another sense: expressing disapproving comment or judgement. The sense in the newspaper article above is different: having the potential to become disastrous. In the first sense, the adjective "critical" is gradable. In the second sense it is non-gradable (like "dead" - you are either dead or alive, you cannot be "very dead"). See http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-non-gradable.htm
What would be alternative? Maybe "highly critical"? or "particularly critical".. well somehow "particularly critical" feels to me more something like a English speaker would say, but it feels also like it does not have exactly same meaning. :)
Comments
Perhaps the word critical has simply got deflated by overuse for exaggeration. And now there's a need for some stronger and more credible word for it.
Yeas I believe I do have same concept in Estonian too.. Although I don't know. I did not enjoy school very much.
Don't want to argue, but I think that stable patients who have high potential to become unstable, would still be counted as critical, therefore they would be observed by nurses for 24h. They are just less critical than the unstable ones who may die and require doctors to assemble(in case of tv. serial to scramble). Thus critical shall be gradable.
Yes I'm actually glad that this rule can make something so not amusing as dead into something amusing. :)
Thank you for explaining.
Yes I knew what the critical mean here, but I had no idea that it's non gradable.
In my personal opinion grading adjectives to gradable and non gradable seems little unreasonable anyways. I don't see anything wrong with such expression like "very dead". It's amusing. And in some situation, when the word dead is used for something inanimate, like a engine of a car, or something. It could be gradable. Since some dead machine u can still bring to life.. While some u can't and some may be possible to bring alive but it's more trouble.
Other thing of course is whether a newspaper's editor should pass something that's not correct English.
But to me critical seems gradable. Since that seems convenient. Example if I had 3 different critical situations in hand. Then I would want to grade them, because I need to chose which one to deal with first. If you had 5 critical patients in hospital 4 of them were stable one amongst them, is better than others. And then the fifth ones is unstable, he's most critical the doctors have to deal with him asap, otherwise he might die.
I can't see anyway how could "critical" be not gradable.
Good point Hardi, but you may be thinking of "critical" in another sense: expressing disapproving comment or judgement. The sense in the newspaper article above is different: having the potential to become disastrous. In the first sense, the adjective "critical" is gradable. In the second sense it is non-gradable (like "dead" - you are either dead or alive, you cannot be "very dead"). See http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-non-gradable.htm
To me it seems like English..
What would be alternative? Maybe "highly critical"? or "particularly critical".. well somehow "particularly critical" feels to me more something like a English speaker would say, but it feels also like it does not have exactly same meaning. :)