characteristic

adjective · noun

Simple meaning

Being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

kehruhkteristik

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice

IPA pronunciation (US)

kɛɹəktɚˈɪstɪk

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

Being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

noun

A distinguishing quality
A distinguishing feature of a person or thing, a part of mental or physical behavior.
nautical
The distinguishing features of a navigational light on a lighthouse etc by which it can be identified (colour, pattern of flashes etc.).

Word at a Glance

Difficulty: B1 · Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency: Moderately Common
Typical Use: General and technical use

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: Being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

Used this way, characteristic is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone: Neutral
Formality: Neutral
Intensity: Not strongly marked
How common: Moderately common
Connotation: No strong connotation
Usage feel: Neutral and straightforward

Nearby words

diagnostic , a specialist term, precise but narrower

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Integer

characteristic equation

Given

characteristic function

Prominent

characteristic feature

Measurable

characteristic impedance

Other combinations

characteristic curvecharacteristic form

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Word family

Words built from the same root.

characteristicallyadverbDerived adverb
In characteristic manner.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

characteristic curvenounCompound term
Graph showing how a particular characteristic of a device varies with other parameters.
characteristic root of a square matrixnounCompound term
Any number such that a given square matrix minus that number times the identity matrix has a zero determinant.
device characteristicnounCompound term
Any measurable property of a device measured under closely specified conditions.
distinguishing characteristicnounCompound term
An odd or unusual characteristic.
frequency-response characteristicnounCompound term
A graph of frequency response with signal amplitude or gain plotted against frequency.
primary sex characteristicnounCompound term
The genetically determined sex characteristics bound up with reproduction (genitals and organs of reproduction).

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

adjective

Sense: being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing

diagnosticTechnicaldistinguishing

noun

Sense: distinguishing quality

distinctive

Antonyms

Sense: being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing

uncharacteristic

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.