Characteristic Definition

kărək-tə-rĭstĭk
characteristics
adjective
Being a feature that helps to distinguish a person or thing; distinctive.
Heard my friend's characteristic laugh; the stripes that are characteristic of the zebra.
American Heritage
Of or constituting the special character; typical; distinctive.
The characteristic odor of cabbage.
Webster's New World

Being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

Wiktionary
noun
characteristics
A distinguishing trait, feature, or quality; peculiarity.
Webster's New World
The whole number, or integral part, of a logarithm, as distinguished from the mantissa.
4 is the characteristic of the logarithm 4.7193
Webster's New World
The least number of times the multiplicative identity in a ring needs to be added to itself to reach the additive identity, or, if the additive identity is never reached, zero. The integers have a characteristic of zero; the integers modulo 12 have a characteristic of 12.
American Heritage

(nautical) The distinguishing features of a navigational light on a lighthouse etc by which it can be identified (colour, pattern of flashes etc)

Wiktionary
Antonyms:

Other Word Forms of Characteristic

Noun

Singular:
characteristic
Plural:
characteristics

Origin of Characteristic

  • From Ancient Greek χαρακτηριστικός (kharaktēristikos), from χαρακτηρίζω (kharaktērizō, “to designate by a characteristic mark”), from χαρακτήρ (kharaktēr, “a mark, character”).

    From Wiktionary

Find Similar Words

Find similar words to characteristic using the buttons below.

Words Starting With

Words Ending With

Unscrambles

characteristic