characteristic

 
Pronunciation: /karəktəˈrɪstɪk/

adjective

  • typical of a particular person, place, or thing: he began with a characteristic attack on extremism

noun

  • 1a feature or quality belonging typically to a person, place, or thing and serving to identify them: certain defining characteristics of the school emerge from the study
  • 2 Mathematics the whole number or integral part of a logarithm, which gives the order of magnitude of the original number.

Derivatives

characteristically

adverb

Origin:

mid 17th century: from French caractéristique or medieval Latin characteristicus, from Greek kharaktēristikos, from kharaktēr 'a stamping tool'