I looked at the origins of
hy·poc·ri·sy 1175–1225; Middle English ipocrisie < Old French < Late Latin hypocrisis < Greek hypókrisis
play acting, equivalent to hypokrī́ ( nesthai ) to play a part,
explain ( hypo- hypo- + krī́nein to distinguish, separate) + -sis
-sis; h- (reintroduced in 16th century) < Latin and Greek
and
crit·ic 1575–85; < Latin criticus < Greek kritikós skilled in judging (adj.), critic (noun),
equivalent to krī́t ( ēs ) judge, umpire ( krī́ ( nein ) to separate,
decide + -tēs agent suffix) + -ikos -ic
and saw that they both have same word 'krī́' but I can't make the connection.
A critic separates and judges i.e. Looking at the source-code by dividing it into smaller pieces and looking through each part carefully.
But then what does a hypocrite do? Separate less than is needed? I must be missing some other Greek terms that give the entire word its meaning…
Best Answer
The prefix hypo means low or less and krī́ is separate. From the Online Etymology Dictionary: "The sense evolution in Attic Greek is from 'separate gradually' to 'answer' to 'answer a fellow actor on stage' to 'play a part.'" So low or less separation -->'separate gradually'. Separating understanding from ignorance or truth from fiction is answering. How this got specialized to simply answering an actor on the stage is hard to imagine, but there were other words for answer, so it's likely that this use simply fell out of favour everywhere except the stage. Once the meaning of speaking on stage was established, it's pretty clear that a hypocrite is an actor, pretending to be one thing while really being another.