Criticism involves an unbiased approach of a person towards a thing, an idea, a person etc. The person who is responsible for criticism is known as a critic. To explain it further, we can relate it with an example of a film critic. A movie critic watches a movie. In the process he analyses the movie with its pros and cons. His criticism leads to certain results and ratings for the movie and then these results are printed or broadcasted in various types of media. People consider the opinion of a good critic and then decide to watch a movie or not. It is up to the viewers to get influenced by the critic or make their own opinion. Again, it is sometimes associated with the negative judgment and sometimes in an intelligent manner.

The English word criticism is derived from the French word critique. Earlier the English meaning of criticism was only limited to literary criticism, but now it has emerged as more specialized in nature. From the 1990s, the perspective of looking at criticism took a negative bend meaning that it started referring to dislike or in disagreement with the subject matter. People still use it in forms of sentences like: - “It does not matter how good I write, but she will still criticize my writing”. Philosophers such as Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos have emphasized on the idea, that criticism is a normal part of a scientific activity and therefore "scientific criticism" has become a standard expression, just like "literary criticism".

Cynicism and Criticism both define the expression that one holds for the other thing, person or idea. Cynicism has been evolved into a negative expression, also is categorized into mocking whereas criticism still with its negative usage is defined to judge a particular, person, activity, idea, etc. Both have different origins but the common thing between the both is that they both have been evolved in terms of meanings.