Characteristic

How to spell characteristic

14 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce characteristic

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does characteristic mean?

1. adjectiveTypical of a particular person, place, or thing; serving to identify or distinguish it.
2. nounA feature or quality that helps to identify or distinguish a person or thing.

Characteristic in a sentence

• adjective

  The dish had the characteristic smoky flavour of slow cooking.

• noun

  Patience is the main characteristic that makes her a good teacher.

• adjective

  She answered the difficult question with characteristic calm.

• noun

  The survey listed each characteristic of the ideal candidate.

Where does characteristic come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word traces back to the Greek kharakter, which originally named an engraving tool and then the distinctive mark it stamped onto a coin or a wax seal. Because such a stamp identified the source and showed its true nature, the word came to mean a defining feature or the imprint of someone's nature. The related adjective kharakteristikos meant 'serving to mark or distinguish', and from it Greek built the sense of a quality that sets one thing apart from another. English took 'character' in through Latin and French during the 1300s, and the longer form 'characteristic' followed in the 1600s as both adjective and noun. The spelling trap lives in that buried Greek 'ch', pronounced like a hard k, plus the unstressed vowels in the middle that the ear cannot reliably place.

How the word is built

• charact- (from Greek kharakter: a stamp, engraved mark)
• -istic (adjective/noun suffix forming 'having the quality of')