crucial

The story

1. Proto-Indo-European · derived from*(s)ker-“to turn, to bend”
2. French · borrowed fromcrucial
3. English todaycrucial

1706, from French crucial, a medical term for ligaments of the knee (which cross each other), from Latin crux, crucis (“cross”) (English crux), from the Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to turn, to bend”). The meaning “decisive, critical” is extended from a logical term, Instantias Crucis, adopted by Francis Bacon in his influential Novum Organum (1620); the notion is of cross fingerboard signposts at forking roads, thus a requirement to choose.

Words from the same roots