<p><strong>Adjective</strong></p><ul><li>Also characteristical.</li><li>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.</li></ul><p><strong>Noun</strong></p><ul><li>a distinguishing feature or quality: Generosity is his chief characteristic.</li><li>Synonyms: trait, property, attribute.</li><li>Mathematics: the integral part of a common logarithm.</li><li>Compare mantissa.</li><li>the exponent of 10 in a number expressed in scientific notation.</li><li>the smallest positive integer n such that each element of a given ring added to itself n times results in 0.</li></ul>