different between character vs minify

English

Etymology

From Middle English caracter, from Old French caractere, from Latin character, from Ancient Greek ???????? (kharakt?r, “type, nature, character”), from ??????? (kharáss?, “I engrave”). Doublet of charakter.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?k??(?)kt?/, /?kæ?(?)kt?/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?kæ??kt?/
• Hyphenation: char?ac?ter

Noun

character (countable and uncountable, plural characters)

1. (countable) A being involved in the action of a story.
2. (countable) A distinguishing feature; characteristic; trait; phene.

3. (uncountable, countable) A complex of traits marking a person, group, breed, or type.

   • A man of […] thoroughly subservient character

4. (uncountable) Strength of mind; resolution; independence; individuality; moral strength.

5. (countable) A unique or extraordinary individual; a person characterized by peculiar or notable traits, especially charisma.

6. (countable) A written or printed symbol, or letter.
   • 1669, William Holder, Elements of Speech

     It were much to be wished that there were throughout the world but one sort of character for each letter to express it to the eye.

7. (countable, dated) Style of writing or printing; handwriting; the particular form of letters used by a person or people.
8. (countable, dated) A secret cipher; a way of writing in code.
9. (countable, computing) One of the basic elements making up a text file or string: a code representing a printing character or a control character.
10. (countable, informal) A person or individual, especially one who is unknown or raises suspicions.

11. (countable, mathematics) A complex number representing an element of a finite Abelian group.
12. (countable) Quality, position, rank, or capacity; quality or conduct with respect to a certain office or duty.

13. (countable, dated) The estimate, individual or general, put upon a person or thing; reputation.

    • This subterraneous passage is much mended since Seneca gave so bad a character of it.

14. (countable, dated) A reference given to a servant, attesting to their behaviour, competence, etc.
15. (countable, obsolete) Personal appearance.

Usage notes

Character is sometimes used interchangeably with reputation, but the two words have different meanings; character describes the distinctive qualities of an individual or group while reputation describes the opinions held by others regarding an individual or group. Character is internal and authentic, while reputation is external and perceived.

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

Pages starting with “character”.

Translations

Verb

character (third-person singular simple present characters, present participle charactering, simple past and past participle charactered)

1. (obsolete) To write (using characters); to describe.

See also

• codepoint
• font
• glyph
• letter
• symbol
• rune
• pictogram

Latin

Etymology

From the Ancient Greek ???????? (kharakt?r).

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /k?a?rak.ter/, [k?ä??äkt??r]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ka?rak.ter/, [k????kt??r]

Noun

character m (genitive charact?ris); third declension

1. branding iron
2. brand (made by a branding iron)
3. characteristic, mark, character, style

Declension

Third-declension noun.

Descendants

• Hungarian: karakter
• Galician: caritel; ? carácter
• Irish: carachtar
• Italian: carattere
• Old French: caractere
  • ? English: character
  • French: caractère
• Polish: charakter
  • ? Russian: ????????? (xarákter)
• Portuguese: caractere, carácter
• Sicilian: caràttiri
• Spanish: carácter

References

• character in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• character in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
• character in Ramminger, Johann (accessed 16 July 2016) Neulateinische Wortliste: Ein Wörterbuch des Lateinischen von Petrarca bis 1700?^[1], pre-publication website, 2005-2016

Portuguese

Noun

character m (plural characteres)

1. Obsolete spelling of caráter (used in Portugal until September 1911 and died out in Brazil during the 1920s).

English

Etymology

mini- +? -fy

Verb

minify (third-person singular simple present minifies, present participle minifying, simple past and past participle minified)

1. To make smaller.
   • 1887, Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 4: Augustine: The Writings Against the Manichaeans and Against the Donatists, "Bibliography: Modern Works"

     Schneckenburger strives to make it appear that Baur unduly minifies the Christian element in Manichæism.

   • 1942, Lloyd C. Douglas, Green Light, Pocket Books Inc., page 170:

     There must be something in the appeal of the Gothic that minifies one group of values leaving other considerations untouched, or actually magnifying them.

2. To reduce in apparent size, as for example objects viewed through a lens or mirror shaped so as to increase the field of view, such as a convex or aspheric mirror or a Fresnel lens
   • 1935, Lloyd C. Douglas, Green Light, Houghton Mifflin, Chapter 10:

     But, mused Parker, this theory of one's perplexities being diminished by the vastly superior height of these Gothic arches cannot have any foundation in fact, for the same inverted telescope that minifies my burdens also minifies my capacity to carry them, leaving me exactly of the same stature as before.

3. (computing) To remove white space and unnecessary characters from a web page's source code in order to reduce its size and improve download time.
   • 2008, Steve Souders, High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers, O'Reilly, page 69:

     When code is minified, all comments are removed, as well as unneeded whitespace characters (space, newline, and tab).

Antonyms

• magnify

Related terms

• minification (noun form)
  • 2010, Stoyan Stefanov, JavaScript Patterns, O'Reilly, page 36:

    Minification is the process of eliminating white space, comments, and other non-essential parts of the JavaScript code to decrease the size of the JavaScript files that need to be transferred from the server to the browser.

Translations