characteristic

comparative more characteristic · superlative most characteristic

1. Indicating a distinguishing feature of a person or thing; typical.First known use 17th c.

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

   1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

2. archaicDescribing or pertaining to personal characters or character types; characterful.First known use 17th c.

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

   1911, Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes, Penguin Classics, published 2007, page 138

plural characteristics

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

   Synonyms: attribute, hallmark, idiosyncrasy, mannerism, quality, tendency, trademark, trait

2. mathematicsThe integer part of a logarithm.

   Similarly, the characteristic for .003 is −3, and the characteristic for .0003 is −4.

   1961, “Principles and Applications of Mathematics for Communications-Electronics”, in U.S, Department of the Army, page 69

   2 more examples

   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.

   1830, Solomon Pearson Miles, Thomas Sherwin, Mathematical Tables: Comprising Logarithms of Numbers, […] , page 69

   As the sine and cosine are always proper fractions their logarithms are negative, i.e. have negative characteristics. When we are given an angle, it is impossible to say, from inspection of the angle, what the characteristic of the logarithm of its sine, cosine or tangent may be; so the characteristics have to be printed with the mantissae.

   1911, F. T. Swanwick, Elementary Trigonometry, Cambridge University Press, page 60

3. nauticalThe distinguishing features of a navigational light on a lighthouse etc by which it can be identified (colour, pattern of flashes etc.).
4. field theory; ring theory; field theory; ring theoryalgebraFor 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.

   3 more examples

   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.

   1992, Simeon Ivanov (translator), P. M. Gudivok, E. Ya. Pogorilyak, On Modular Representations of Finite Groups over Integral Domains, Simeon Ivanov (editor), Galois Theory, Rings, Algebraic Groups and Their Applications, American Mathematical Society, page 87, Let R be a Noetherian factorial ring of characteristic p which is not a field.

   Traditionally, a complete, discretely valued field of characteristic zero, the maximal ideal of whose valuation ring is generated by the prime number p, has been called a p-adic field. In our terminology, the valuation ring of a p-adic field is a Cohen ring of characteristic zero whose residue field has characteristic p, and consequently a p-adic field is simply the quotient field of such a Cohen ring.

   1993, S. Warner, Topological Rings, Elsevier (North-Holland), page 424