what does characteristic mean?

Answer 1

it comes from a Greek word and it means things that represent something or someone !for example patience is a characteristic of him or high temperature is the characteristic of the summer!hope that i helped..

Answer 2

Adjective-
1. Also, char·ac·ter·is·ti·cal. pertaining to, constituting, or indicating the character or peculiar quality of a person or thing; typical; distinctive: Red and gold are the characteristic colors of autumn.

Noun-
2. a distinguishing feature or quality: Generosity is his chief characteristic.
3. Mathematics. a. the integral part of a common logarithm. Compare mantissa.
b. the exponent of 10 in a number expressed in scientific notation.
c. the smallest positive integer n such that each element of a given ring added to itself n times results in 0.



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[Origin: 1655–65; < Gk charaktéristikós. See character, -istic]

—Related forms
char·ac·ter·is·ti·cal·ly, adverb


Synonyms-
1. special, peculiar.
2. attribute, property, trait. See feature.

char·ac·ter·is·tic (kār'ək-tə-rĭs'tĭk) Pronunciation Key
adj. Being a feature that helps to distinguish a person or thing; distinctive: heard my friend's characteristic laugh; the stripes that are characteristic of the zebra.

n.
A feature that helps to identify, tell apart, or describe recognizably; a distinguishing mark or trait.
Mathematics The integral part of a logarithm as distinguished from the mantissa: The characteristic of the logarithm 6.3214 is 6.
Mathematics The least number of times the multiplicative identity in a ring needs to be added to itself to reach the additive identity, or, if the additive identity is never reached, zero. The integers have a characteristic of zero; the integers modulus 12 have a characteristic of 12.

There's a lot more info at :
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/characteristic

Answer 3

This refers to a personality predisposition that may be taught, learned, or altered but probably occurs naturally in some people more than others. An example of a characteristic is tenacity.