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Impress vs Characteristic - What's the difference?

impress | characteristic | Related terms |

Impress is a related term of characteristic.


As nouns the difference between impress and characteristic

is that impress is the act of impressing while characteristic is a distinguishable feature of a person or thing.

As a verb impress

is to affect (someone) strongly and often favourably.

As an adjective characteristic is

being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing.

impress

English

Verb

(es)
  • To affect (someone) strongly and often favourably.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
  • , chapter=5 citation , passage=Mr. Campion appeared suitably impressed and she warmed to him. He was very easy to talk to with those long clown lines in his pale face, a natural goon, born rather too early she suspected.}}
  • To make an impression, to be impressive.
  • * {{quote-news, year=2012, date=September 7, author=Phil McNulty, title=Moldova 0-5 England
  • , work=BBC Sport citation , passage=Manchester United's Tom Cleverley impressed on his first competitive start and Lampard demonstrated his continued worth at international level in a performance that was little more than a stroll once England swiftly exerted their obvious authority.}}
  • To produce a vivid impression of (something).
  • To mark or stamp (something) using pressure.
  • * Shakespeare
  • his heart, like an agate, with your print impressed
  • To produce (a mark, stamp, image, etc.); to imprint (a mark or figure upon something).
  • (figurative) To fix deeply in the mind; to present forcibly to the attention, etc.; to imprint; to inculcate.
  • * I. Watts
  • Impress the motives of persuasion upon our own hearts till we feel the force of them.
  • To compel (someone) to serve in a military force.
  • To seize or confiscate (property) by force.
  • * Evelyn
  • the second five thousand pounds impressed for the service of the sick and wounded prisoners

    Synonyms

    * make an impression on * cut a figure * (produce a vivid impression of) * imprint, print, stamp * : pressgang * : confiscate, impound, seize, sequester

    Noun

    (es)
  • The act of impressing.
  • An impression; an impressed image or copy of something.
  • * Shakespeare
  • This weak impress of love is as a figure / Trenched in ice.
  • * 1908 , Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans , Norton 2005, p. 1330:
  • We know that you were pressed for money, that you took an impress of the keys which your brother held
  • A stamp or seal used to make an impression.
  • An impression on the mind, imagination etc.
  • * 2007 , John Burrow, A History of Histories , Penguin 2009, p. 187:
  • Such admonitions, in the English of the Authorized Version, left an indelible impress on imaginations nurtured on the Bible
  • Characteristic; mark of distinction; stamp.
  • (South)
  • A heraldic device; an impresa.
  • (Cussans)
  • * Milton
  • To describe emblazoned shields, / Impresses quaint.
  • The act of impressing, or taking by force for the public service; compulsion to serve; also, that which is impressed.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Why such impress of shipwrights?

    characteristic

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing.
  • * , chapter=12
  • , title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross. Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech. In the present connexion […] such talk had been distressingly out of place.}}

    Synonyms

    * distinctive * exclusive * idiosyncratic * indicative * representative * signature * specific * typical

    Antonyms

    * uncharacteristic * untypical

    Derived terms

    * characteristic function * characteristicness

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • a distinguishable feature of a person or thing
  • (mathematics) the integer part of a logarithm
  • (nautical) the distinguishing features of a navigational light on a lighthouse etc by which it can be identified (colour, pattern of flashes etc)
  • (algebra, field theory) The minimum number of times that the unit of a field must be added unto itself in order to yield that field's zero, or, if that minimum natural number does not exist, then (the integer) zero.
  • A field's characteristic, if non-zero, must be a prime number.

    Synonyms

    * attribute * idiosyncrasy * mannerism * quality * tendency * trademark * trait * See also

    Derived terms

    * defining characteristic

    See also

    * mantissa