The word characteristic alludes to a determining quality of certain people who manage to differentiate them from others, that is, they are those adjectives that qualify something or someone. They are traits that can allow us to distinguish ourselves from our peers, they could be traits that are related to our character, personality, something symbolic and in addition to our physical appearance as if we are dark or light skinned, fat or thin, tall or short between other aspects. This peculiarity allows other people to identify and remember us more easily or to something specific.
It should be noted that all information pertaining to an object, subject or state can also be called characteristics or technical or natural aspects and manages to define it as such.
What is a feature
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It is understood as a distinctive quality or trait that describes a specific person or something, be it an object, a place or a situation, and stands out from a similar set.
The word comes from the French word and in turn, it is derived from the Greek charaktēristikós (grχαρακτηριστικός). The definition of characteristic is formed from the Greek root kharax, which means "mark", the word ter, which means "agent" and the suffix ico, which means "relative to". In this way, the initial development of what is a characteristic is established.
This term encompasses all the aspects or variables that make up the state and identity of a particular entity, which can be either a person, an animal, a plant, an object or even a condition or scenario.
What are the features for
These are those qualities or traits that allow people to obtain information about what an object or individual they want to know is like, since the more they know about them, the more they can differentiate them. With the above, we can give an idea of the meaning of characteristic.
It is important to highlight that this concept has two fundamental axes: equality and difference. If you observe something uniform for example in a huge desert, the characteristics are really limited, so basically you can talk about everything about the sand. On the other hand, if you contemplate a beautiful jungle landscape, you will immediately appreciate infinite attributes. In conclusion, something that is the same or similar ends up decreasing the number of qualities, while diversity increases the use of them in a quantitative way.
Knowing a reality means distinguishing those fundamental aspects from those that are not. This is why to perform an analysis it is very common to perform a classification and thus know what the characteristics are for. A good example is the classification of living beings, in which individuals are gradually described from their general features to the most specific and particular.
In everyday language we need to describe what surrounds us. For this, it is necessary to use words that refer to certain particularities of what we describe.
Difference between features and specification
The difference between characteristics and specification, states that; the characteristics represent a quality, peculiarity of a person or thing in specific that distinguishes it from others. The specifications mean something concrete, clarifying the information that has been provided previously. Therefore, a specification is a detailed explanation. In this way, the concept being analyzed implies that something general can only be understood with precision if all the elements that compose it are described and thus the difference between both terms is clarified.
Feature types
Among the types of characteristics are:
Common features
They are a set of traits or common trait in a set of people or objects, for example: skin color.
Characteristics of a species
They represent a set of qualities and characteristics that identify a specific species, an example of this can be: Human beings which have the ability to think.
Unique qualities belong to this line, since they specify a unique trait or particularity in an individual, animal or thing. An example of this can be: the attitude, way of being or thinking of a person.
It is worth mentioning that in certain aspects these can be taken as main and secondary. When we talk about main ones, it is because they are fundamental data to have knowledge of something, while secondary ones are simply accessory and not very relevant. For example, in a soccer game, the main distinguishing features would be the rules of the game, while the selection of one area of the field or another would be a secondary characteristic.
Among its types, it is also worth mentioning the definition of physical characteristics, these consist of everything that has a certain shape, it can be described from observable properties. For example, an individual tends to present peculiarities related to their size, external appearance and speech, height, weight, eye and hair color, etc.
If a specific object or territory is referenced, we also set a series of items and create a physical feature definition.
Psychological characteristics are also important, they can be perceived when we meet a person beyond their physical appearance. An individual can be generous, sincere, impulsive, and kind, and all of these personality traits express the different traits of his human dimension.
These traits, or some of them, may be essential, since without them we would not be part of our species, and others are peculiar to each individual.
An essential characteristic of the human species is to be endowed with reason, and they are accidental characteristics of the members of the species that allow them to be identified as unique or individual, such as mentioned before, if they are tall or short, introverted or extroverted, among many others.
In addition, animals also have certain traits or qualities that define them, an example of this are dogs that tend to be differentiated by their fur, legs, etc., and that manage to communicate by barking, unlike cats, whose way of communicating It is through meows, and like these, there are also different details that show what a characteristic is like between species and how they can be distinguished from others.
In another sense, the word characteristic is used to describe the prefix of a telephone, in countries like Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay. Or the figure that shows the integer part of a logarithm is also called a "characteristic".
