trait
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1. peculiarity, mark, attribute, property.
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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trait (treɪt, treɪ) ![[Click for IPA pronunciation guide]](http://static.sfdict.com/dictstatic/g/d/dictionary_questionbutton_default.gif) | |
| —n | |
| 1. | a characteristic feature or quality distinguishing a particular person or thing |
| 2. | rare a touch or stroke |
| [C16: from French, from Old French: a pulling, from Latin tractus, from trahere to drag] | |
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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| a children's mummer's parade, as on the Fourth of July, with prizes for the best costumes. |
| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |
trait
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trait (trāt)
n.
A characteristic, especially one that distinguishes an individual from others.
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
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| trait (trāt) Pronunciation Key
A genetically determined characteristic or condition. Traits may be physical, such as hair color or leaf shape, or they may be behavioral, such as nesting in birds and burrowing in rodents. Traits typically result from the combined action of several genes, though some traits are expressed by a single gene. |
Copyright © 2002. Published by Houghton Mifflin. All rights reserved.
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trait
in biology, any observable feature, or trait, of an organism, whether acquired or inherited. An acquired character is a response to the environment; an inherited character is produced by genes transmitted from parent to offspring (their expressions are often modified by environmental conditions). One gene may affect many characters; one character may be controlled by many genes. A character controlled by only a few genes is known as an oligogenic, discontinuous, or qualitative character; a character controlled by many genes is termed polygenic, continuous, or quantitative. A genetically controlled character may be termed dominant when its controlling genes are powerful enough to mask the effect of other genes (alleles) that control an alternative character, termed recessive
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