characterize
Formscharacterizes, characterizing, characterized
UK spellingcharacterise
- 1To depict or describe someone or something in a particular way, often negatively.
The report characterizes the company's response as slow and inadequate.
Opponents tried to characterize her as out of touch with ordinary voters.
Similardescribe, portray, depict, label, cast
Note
Here the verb nearly always travels with as: someone characterizes a policy as hypocritical, a response as slow. The as-phrase carries the judgment, so the construction suits reporting a view that belongs to a particular speaker, and that view is often an unflattering one. The framing is a choice someone makes, which sets it apart from the scientist's 'determine' sense, where properties are found by measurement rather than asserted.
- 2To be typical of; to be a distinguishing feature or quality of.
Sharp wit and dry humor characterize her writing.
The instability that characterized the postwar years gradually gave way to steady growth.
Similartypify, distinguish, mark, define
Note
The sense that stays closest to the Greek source: kharaktērízō, "to designate by a characteristic mark", from kharaktḗr, "a mark". The subject is the feature and the object is what it marks. The slight cups, crooks, bows and twists characterize wood, never the reverse. No person does the characterizing here, and that is the easiest way to tell it from the 'depict as' sense.
- 3To determine the characteristics or distinctive properties of something.
Researchers used X-ray diffraction to characterize the crystal structure of the sample.
Geologists characterized the soil at several depths before construction began.
Similaranalyze
Note
A working scientist's verb, at home beside measure, describe and quantify, as in Brian Voigt's Glossary of Coastal Terminology (1998), where technologies characterize the physical properties and processes of a coast. The object is a material, sample or system. The result is a set of established properties rather than an opinion. To characterize a soil is to test it, not to pass judgment on it.
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Origin
This comes from Medieval Latin charactērizō, from Ancient Greek χαρακτηρίζω (kharaktērízō, "to designate by a characteristic mark"), from χαρακτήρ (kharaktḗr, "a mark, character"). It can be analyzed as "character" plus the suffix "-ize."