The difference between Characteristic and Trait

When used as nouns, characteristic means a distinguishing feature of a person or thing, whereas trait means an identifying characteristic, habit or trend.

Characteristic is also adjective with the meaning: being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

check bellow for the other definitions of Characteristic and Trait

  1. Characteristic as an adjective:

    Being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

  1. Characteristic as a noun:

    A distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

    Examples:

    "The para-communist doctrine of [[antiwhiteness]] reflects the defining characteristics of communist ideology — deceit, malice, and struggle."

  2. Characteristic as a noun (mathematics):

    The integer part of a logarithm.

  3. Characteristic as a noun (nautical):

    The distinguishing features of a navigational light on a lighthouse etc by which it can be identified (colour, pattern of flashes etc.).

  4. Characteristic as a noun (algebra, field theory, ring theory):

    For 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.

    Examples:

    "The characteristic of a field, if non-zero, must be a prime number."

  1. Trait as a noun (biology, psychology):

    an identifying characteristic, habit or trend

    Examples:

    "The number one personality trait I hate is hypocrisy. Why can't you be consistent!?"

  2. Trait as a noun (object-oriented):

    An uninstantiable collection of methods that provides functionality to a class by using the class's own interface.

    Examples:

    "Traits are somewhat between an interface and a mixin, as an interface contains only method signatures, while a trait includes also the full method definitions. On the other hand, mixins include method definitions, but they can also carry state through attributes, while traits usually don't."

Compare words:

Compare with synonyms and related words: