different between own vs characteristic

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /???n/
• (US) enPR: ?n, IPA^(key): /?o?n/
• (Hong Kong) IPA^(key): /?u?/
• Rhymes: -??n

Etymology 1

From Middle English owen, a?en, from Old English ?gen (“own, proper, peculiar”), from Proto-West Germanic *aigan (“own”), from Proto-Germanic *aiganaz (“own”), from Proto-Indo-European *h?ey?- (“to have, possess”).

Alternative forms

• 'n (informal contraction)

Adjective

own

2. Belonging to; possessed; proper to. Often marks a possessive determiner as reflexive, referring back to the subject of the clause or sentence.
3. Not shared

4. (obsolete) Peculiar, domestic.
5. (obsolete) Not foreign.

Usage notes

• Often used for implication of ownership, often with emphasis. In modern usage, it always follows a possessive determiner, or a noun in the possessive case.

Derived terms

• be one's own worst enemy
• come into one's own
• hoist by one's own petard
• one's own boss
• on one's own

Translations

Etymology 2

A back-formation from owner, owning and own (adjective). Compare Old English ?gnian, Dutch eigenen, German eignen, Swedish ägna.

Verb

own (third-person singular simple present owns, present participle owning, simple past and past participle owned)

1. (transitive) To have rightful possession of (property, goods or capital); to have legal title to.

   I own this car.

2. (transitive) To have recognized political sovereignty over a place, territory, as distinct from the ordinary connotation of property ownership.

3. (transitive) To defeat or embarrass; to overwhelm.

   I will own my enemies.

   If he wins, he will own you.

4. (transitive) To virtually or figuratively enslave.
5. (online gaming, slang) To defeat, dominate, or be above, also spelled pwn.
6. (transitive, computing, slang) To illicitly obtain superuser or root access to a computer system, thereby having access to all of the user files on that system; pwn.
7. (intransitive) To admit, concede, grant, allow, acknowledge, confess; not to deny.
   • 1913, D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, chapter 5

     They learned how perfectly peaceful the home could be. And they almost regretted—though none of them would have owned to such callousness—that their father was soon coming back.

8. (transitive) To admit; concede; acknowledge.
   • 1611, Shakespeare, The Tempest, v.:

     Two of those fellows you must know and own.

   • 1843, Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, book 2, ch. 1, Jocelin of Brakelond

     It must be owned, the good Jocelin, spite of his beautiful childlike character, is but an altogether imperfect 'mirror' of these old-world things!

9. (transitive) To take responsibility for.
10. (transitive) To answer to.
11. (transitive) To recognise; acknowledge.

    to own one as a son

12. (transitive) To claim as one's own.
13. (intransitive, Britain dialectal) To confess.

Synonyms

• (have rightful possession of): to possess
• (defeat): beat, defeat, overcome, overthrow, vanquish, have, take, best

Antonyms

• (admit): disown

Derived terms

Translations

References

• 1896, Universal Dictionary of the English Language [UDEL], v3 p3429:

  To possess by right; to have the right of property in; to have the legal right or rightful title to.

• 1896, ibid., UDEL
• 1896, ibid., UDEL
• 1896, ibid., UDEL

Anagrams

• NOW, NWO, now, won

Portuguese

Interjection

own

1. aw (used to express affection)

Quotations

For quotations using this term, see Citations:own.

English

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ??????????????? (kharakt?ristikós), from ??????????? (kharakt?ríz?, “to designate by a characteristic mark”), from ???????? (kharakt?r, “a mark, character”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?kæ??kt????st?k/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?k???kt????st?k/
• Rhymes: -?st?k
• Hyphenation: char?ac?te?ris?tic

Adjective

characteristic (comparative more characteristic, superlative most characteristic)

1. Being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

Synonyms

• distinctive
• exclusive
• idiosyncratic
• indicative
• representative
• signature
• specific
• typical

Antonyms

• uncharacteristic
• untypical

Derived terms

• characteristic function
• characteristicness

Translations

Noun

characteristic (plural characteristics)

1. A distinguishing feature of a person or thing.
2. (mathematics) The integer part of a logarithm.
   • 1830, Solomon Pearson Miles, Thomas Sherwin, Mathematical Tables: Comprising Logarithms of Numbers, […] , page 69,

     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.

   • 1911, F. T. Swanwick, Elementary Trigonometry, Cambridge University Press, page 60,

     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.

   • 1961, Principles and Applications of Mathematics for Communications-Electronics, [U.S.] Department of the Army, page 69,

     Similarly, the characteristic for .003 is ?3, and the characteristic for .0003 is ?4.

3. (nautical) The distinguishing features of a navigational light on a lighthouse etc by which it can be identified (colour, pattern of flashes etc.).
4. (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.
   • 1962 [John Wiley & Sons], Nathan Jacobson, Lie Algebras, 1979, Dover, page 289,

     In this chapter we study the problem of classifying the finite-dimensional simple Lie algebras over an arbitrary field of characteristic 0.

   • 1992, Simeon Ivanov (translator), P. M. Gudivok, E. Ya. Pogorilyak, On Modular Representations of Finite Groups over Integral Domains, Simeon Ivanov (editor), Galois Theory, Rings, Algebraic Groups and Their Applications, American Mathematical Society, page 87,

     Let R be a Noetherian factorial ring of characteristic p which is not a field.

   • 1993, S. Warner, Topological Rings, Elsevier (North-Holland), page 424,

     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.

Synonyms

• (distinguishing feature of a person or thing): attribute, hallmark, idiosyncrasy, mannerism, quality, tendency, trademark, trait
• See also Thesaurus:characteristic

Coordinate terms

• (part of a logarithm): mantissa

Derived terms

• defining characteristic

Related terms

• characteristically

Translations

See also

• mantissa

Further reading

• characteristic in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• characteristic in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

Interlingua

Adjective

characteristic (not comparable)

1. characteristic

Related terms

• characteristica