characteristic
Pronunciation: /ˌkæɹəktəˈɹɪstɪk/
The English word “characteristic” has 6 meanings listed here.
adjective
- Indicating a distinguishing feature of a person or thing; typical.
- Describing or pertaining to personal characters or character types; characterful.
noun
- A distinguishing feature of a person or thing, a part of mental or physical behavior.
- The integer part of a logarithm.
- The distinguishing features of a navigational light on a lighthouse etc by which it can be identified (colour, pattern of flashes etc.).
- For a given field or ring, a natural number that is either the smallest positive number n such that n instances of the multiplicative identity (1) summed together yield the additive identity (0) or, if no such number exists, the number 0.
Etymology
From Ancient Greek χαρακτηριστικός (kharaktēristikós), from χαρακτηρίζω (kharaktērízō, “to designate by a characteristic mark”), from χαρακτήρ (kharaktḗr, “a mark, character”). By surface analysis, character + -istic.
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More English words
- characteriology
- characterism
- characterismus
- characterist
- characteristic function
- characteristic polynomial
- characteristic root
- characteristic time
About this dictionary
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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.