Criticism is considered to be less authoritative than poetry, novel, and play in the aspect of genre`s specialty in literature education. And, in the aspect of acceptance of works, it receives less support due to the reason of being less popular compared to reading. The unstable status of criticism in literature education is reflected in various ways to the concept, content and activity of criticism. For example, the nature of criticism is sometimes understood as ‘interpretation’ or sometimes as ‘interpretation and ‘interpretation’. Therefore, to establish criticism as an educational content of literature education, it is necessary first to investigate the terminology of ‘criticism’ from the perspective of its origin and usage and to set up clearly the meaning of ‘criticism’. This article examines the meaning criticism has exposed through the origin and usage of the terminology of ‘criticism’ and searches in the course the elements that compose the concept of criticism.