Character
/ˈkærəktər/noun
The qualities that make a person or place distinct, a symbol in writing, or a person in a story.
The Greek roots
Literally: “an engraved mark”
The story of the word
The first χαρακτήρ was the tool that stamped a coin, then the mark the tool left. Theophrastus wrote thirty short sketches of Athenian types, the flatterer, the boor, the man who will not stop talking, and called them Characters, fixing the sense of a stamped moral type. The two modern senses, a letter on a page and a person's inner nature, are one metaphor: something cut in deep enough that it will not rub off. Computing then borrowed the letter sense back.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old French → English
- First recorded
- 14th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
The job tested his character more than his skills.
Every character in the novel speaks in the same voice.