adjective Indicating a distinguishing feature of a person or thing; typical. .mw-parser-output .defdate{font-size:smaller}
adjective Describing or pertaining to personal characters or character types; characterful.
noun A distinguishing feature of a person or thing, a part of mental or physical behavior.
noun The integer part of a logarithm.
noun The distinguishing features of a navigational light on a lighthouse etc by which it can be identified (colour, pattern of flashes etc.).
noun 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.