Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A distinguishing feature, as of a person's character. synonym: quality.
  • noun A genetically determined characteristic or condition.
  • noun Archaic A short line or mark made with a writing or drawing implement.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A stroke; a touch.
  • noun A distinguishing or peculiar feature; a peculiarity: as, a trait of character.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A stroke; a touch.
  • noun A distinguishing or marked feature; a peculiarity.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun an identifying characteristic, habit or trend
  • noun computing, programming In object-oriented programming, an uninstantiable collection of methods that provides functionality to a class by using the class’s own interface.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a distinguishing feature of your personal nature

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French, pull, stroke, line, feature, from Old French, from Latin tractus, a drawing out, line; see tract.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle French, from Latin tractus.

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Examples

Comments

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  • The trailing t is silent.

    November 7, 2007

  • Lethality is a trait of the krait.

    November 7, 2007

  • And the mark of the shark. Or the prevalent feature of the malevolent creature.

    November 7, 2007

  • Apparently, the trailing t is silent in Britain, but never in America, where you would not be understood.

    November 8, 2007

  • This silent trailing t is nonsense; I'm from Britain and have only ever heard both t's fully annunciated.

    November 8, 2007

  • what yarb said. Well, actually, enunciated.

    November 8, 2007

  • Ahem.

    November 8, 2007

  • I was wondering about that.... :-\

    November 8, 2007