characteristic

1. 1

   Indicating a distinguishing feature of a person or thing; typical.

   • Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech.
2. 2

   Describing or pertaining to personal characters or character types; characterful.archaic

   • “Great men have their surprising peculiarities,” I observed inanely. “[…] How did the great feminist wind up this very characteristic episode?”

syn. distinctive · exclusive · idiosyncratic · indicative · representative · signature · specific · typical · proper

ant. uncharacteristic · untypical

1. 1

   A distinguishing feature of a person or thing, a part of mental or physical behavior.

2. 2

   The integer part of a logarithm.

   • It is evident, moreover, that as the logarithms of numbers, which are tenfold, the one of the other, do not differ except in their characteristics, it is sufficient that the tables contain the fractional parts only of the logarithms.
   • Similarly, the characteristic for .003 is −3, and the characteristic for .0003 is −4.
3. 3

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

4. 4

   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.

   • The characteristic of a field, if non-zero, must be a prime number.
   • 1962 [John Wiley & Sons], Nathan Jacobson, Lie Algebras, 1979, Dover, page 289, In this chapter we study the problem of classifying the finite-dimensional simple Lie algebras over an arbitrary field of characteristic 0.

syn. characteristic · designation · vein · distinctiveness · feature · owndom · parameter · property · propriety · race · touch · whatness