trait
- 01 B2 Upper Intermediate
a quality that is part of your personality.
a distinguishing feature of a person's character or nature.
Simple“Patience is a very important trait for a primary school teacher to have.”
In context“The candidate's most impressive trait was her ability to remain composed under intense questioning from the board.”
Synonyms - 02 B2 Upper Intermediate
a physical quality that is passed from parents to children through genes.
a genetically determined characteristic or condition.
Simple“Eye colour is a physical trait that you inherit from your parents.”
In context“Researchers are investigating which specific genetic traits make certain plant species more resistant to drought.”
UsageOften used in the context of heredity and evolution.
- 03 C2 Proficiency
a set of methods used in computer programming to give extra powers to a class.
a collection of methods that provides functionality to a class, used as a tool for code reuse in object-oriented programming.
Simple“The programmer used a trait to share the same code between two different objects.”
In context“By implementing the trait, the developer ensured that multiple classes could share the same logging behaviour without complex inheritance.”
UsageCommon in languages like Rust, Scala, and PHP.
Teacher's tipThis is a highly specialized technical sense; general learners only need the character-based definition.
Synonymsinterfacemixin
Usage human trait · personality trait · trait homogeneous
“This comes as no surprise to researchers who study twins, who have documented similar patterns for many other human traits .”
“They measured several traits that could be influenced by climate conditions or pollinator activity.”
Borrowed from Middle French trait (“line, feature”), from Latin tractus (“drawing, pulling”), from Latin trahō. Doublet of tract.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.