Attribute vs. Characteristic

Attribute (noun)

A characteristic or quality of a thing.

“His finest attribute is his kindness.”

Attribute (noun)

A word that qualifies a noun, a qualifier.

“In the clause “My jacket is more expensive than yours”, “My” is the attribute of “jacket”.”

Attribute (noun)

That which is predicated or affirmed of a subject; a predicate; an accident.

Attribute (noun)

An option or setting belonging to some object.

“This packet has its coherency attribute set to zero.”

“A file with the read-only attribute set cannot be overwritten.”

Attribute (noun)

A semantic item with which a method or other code element may be decorated.

“Properties can be marked as obsolete with an attribute, which will cause the compiler to generate a warning if they are used.”

Attribute (noun)

in a Nutshell (page 536)

Attribute (noun)

A numeric value representing the colours of part of the screen display.

Attribute (verb)

To ascribe (something) to a given cause, reason etc.

Attribute (verb)

To associate ownership or authorship of (something) to someone.

“This poem is attributed to Browning.”

Characteristic (adjective)

Being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

Characteristic (noun)

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.”

Characteristic (noun)

The integer part of a logarithm.

Characteristic (noun)

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

Characteristic (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.”