How do you use the word "characteristic" in a sentence?

Here are real-life examples of using "characteristic": Slow speech is characteristic of that man. It's characteristic of him to behave like that.

Characteristic Meaning

/ˌkæɹəktəˈɹɪstɪk/

Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.

Definition

adjBeing a distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

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

Sentence Examples

Slow speech is characteristic of that man.

It's characteristic of him to behave like that.

Community support of families is characteristic of many societies.

Synonyms & Antonyms

Synonyms:

typical feature peculiar

Antonyms:

uncharacteristic

CEFR Practice Quiz

A key ____ of mammals is that they feed their young with milk.

CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)

A ____ of this animal is its long neck and its very large ears city.

Word Origin & History

Etymology tree Ancient Greek χαράσσω (kharássō) Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Ancient Greek -τήρ (-tḗr) Ancient Greek χαρακτήρ (kharaktḗr) Proto-Indo-European *-id- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti Proto-Hellenic *-íďďō Ancient Greek -ίζω (-ízō) Ancient Greek χαρακτηρίζω (kharaktērízō) Proto-Indo-European *-tis Ancient Greek -τις (-tis) Ancient Greek -σῐς (-sĭs) Proto-Indo-European *-kos Ancient Greek -κός (-kós) ? Proto-Indo-European *-tós Proto-Hellenic *-tós Ancient Greek -τος (-tos) ▲ Ancient Greek -κός (-kós) ? Ancient Greek -τικός (-tikós) Ancient Greek χᾰρᾰκτηριστῐκός (khărăktēristĭkós)der. English characteristic From Ancient Greek χαρακτηριστικός (kharaktēristikós), from χαρακτηρίζω (kharaktērízō, “to designate by a characteristic mark”), from χαρακτήρ (kharaktḗr, “a mark, character”). By surface analysis, character + -istic.

Literary Quotations & Historical Citations

"All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross. Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech. In the present connexion […] such talk had been distressingly out of place." — 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

"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:

"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:

"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:

Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words