crisis

The word 'crisis' entered English in the early 15th century via Latin from the Greek krisis, meaning "decision, judgment, turning point." The Greek term derives from the verb krinein, "to decide, judge, separate." This etymological journey reveals the core logic of the word: a crisis is fundamentally a decisive moment, a point of separation where one path diverges from another. Originally used in medicine for the turning point of a disease and in rhetoric for a decisive point in an argument, its meaning broadened over centuries to encompass any critical or dangerous situation demanding judgment and resolution. The modern abstract sense of an intense difficulty retains the original notion of a pivotal juncture requiring a decisive change.

The word 'crisis' is a simplex loanword from Greek. It cannot be meaningfully segmented into smaller morphemes using its current English spelling without resorting to reconstructed Greek forms (e.g., krinein).