Other forms: characteristics
A characteristic is a quality that marks something out as itself. The feature you would name if asked to describe it.
It takes of. The word is used across biology, business and description, so the characteristics of a species, the characteristics of a good manager and the characteristics of a region are all standard. As an adjective it means typical, so a characteristic gesture is one somebody always makes, and with characteristic modesty is a phrase that can be sincere or heavily ironic. The adverb characteristically works the same way.
1nouncharacteristicA feature or quality typical of a person or thing.
“Patience is not one of his characteristics.”
2adjectiveparticularTypical of a particular person or thing.
“He answered with characteristic bluntness.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
A characteristic is a mark. Greek charaktēr meant a stamp or an engraved mark, and charaktērizō was to pick a thing out by it, so a character was a distinguishing sign before it was ever a person.
Ancient Greek
χᾰρᾰκτηριστῐκός
English, today
characteristic
Built from
From Ancient Greek χᾰρᾰκτηριστῐκός. From Ancient Greek χαρακτηριστικός, from χαρακτηρίζω (“to designate by a characteristic mark”), from χαρακτήρ (“a mark, character”). by surface analysis, character + -istic.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA