Trait vs. Characteristic

Difference Between Trait and Characteristic

Traitnoun

an identifying characteristic, habit or trend

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

Characteristicadjective

Being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

Traitnoun

(object-oriented) An uninstantiable collection of methods that provides functionality to a class by using the class’s own interface.

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.

Characteristicnoun

A distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

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

Traitnoun

a distinguishing feature of your personal nature

Characteristicnoun

(mathematics) The integer part of a logarithm.

Characteristicnoun

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

Characteristicnoun

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.

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