karaktäristiska

Karaktäristiska is a Swedish term that relates to characteristic features or traits. In practice, it is used to talk about features that help identify, distinguish, or typify a person, organism, phenomenon, or object. The expression commonly appears in phrases such as karaktäristiska drag or karaktäristiska egenskaper, meaning the characteristic features or traits of something.

Grammatically, karaktäristiska functions as an adjective form and is often part of a noun phrase. For example, man might refer to a species’ karaktäristiska drag or to the karaktäristiska kännetecken of a dialect. The plural form is used when discussing several defining features. The term is widely used across disciplines, including biology, linguistics, psychology, and the humanities, as well as in everyday description.

Etymology traces karaktäristiska to karaktär (character) with the suffix -istisk, forming a word that denotes relating to characteristics. The concept also aligns with cognate terms in other languages, such as characteristic or caractéristique in French, reflecting a shared idea of distinguishing features.

Usage notes: karaktäristiska emphasizes features that typify or distinguish a subject, rather than general properties. It often carries a sense of what makes something representative of a group or category, in contrast to more general terms like egenskaper (properties) or attribut. Synonyms and near-synonyms include drag, kännetecken, and karakteristiska drag. In Swedish writing, using karaktäristiska together with a noun (drag, egenskaper, kännetecken) is a common and clear way to convey defining features.