crucial ingredient
1
3.5
- noun
:
ingrediente crucial
- While trusting your gut is completely unscientific, it encompasses two crucial ingredients for startup success: passion and commitment.
Examples
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Intelligence is a crucial ingredient in the mix of power and influence that makes the United States a world power and a shaper of international politics on the side of freedom.
Academic text (1996) -
This was, of course, partly a question of image management; that is, the political posture of the government rather than its economic policies was the crucial ingredient here.
Academic text (1992) -
Some degree of control is the next crucial ingredient of satisfaction.
Academic text (1991) -
This is lye, the crucial ingredient.
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Because carrying out a commercialization strategy may require institution building, training, or market development activities, sustained commitment to the enterprise is another crucial ingredient.
Academic text (1995) -
A dad's involvement in his daughter's life is a crucial ingredient in the development of a young woman's self-esteem.
Blog text (9) -
Converting a disruptive innovation to a sustaining one entails significant adaptation, and leadership is the crucial ingredient in doing so.
Academic text (2015) -
Given that instinctive sympathy is the crucial ingredient to morality, and given that it operates independently of the will, it would seem that we have reasons for optimism.
Blog text (20) -
Fortunately, Marx had a crucial ingredient for his attempted solution close at hand: the Saint-Simonian concept of human history as driven by an inherent struggle among economic classes.
Blog text (5) -
Communication is a crucial ingredient for effective teamwork in any organization.
Synonyms
228
2.8
The main thing that makes something succeed or work
14
4.9
The main thing that keeps something working or alive
12
3.5
The most important part of something, often in a recipe or plan
4
3.0
A thing you need for a recipe, process, or result to work
3
6.8
Something needed for a particular activity or purpose
Antonyms
How Essential
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'an essential component' is directly derivable from combining 'crucial' (essential) with 'ingredient' (component/factor), so a B1 learner who knows both words can understand the phrase. This is a straightforward compositional collocation used metaphorically but predictably and is cross-linguistically common, making it transparent.
Etymology
The phrase crucial ingredient comes from cooking. Imagine a recipe: one ingredient you must add, like salt or yeast, without which the dish fails. That's why the phrase means 'an essential part needed for success'.