characterisation

1. 1.

   a graphic or vivid verbal description

   “too often the narrative was interrupted by long word pictures”

   “the author gives a depressing picture of life in Poland”

   “the pamphlet contained brief characterizations of famous Vermonters”

   Synonymsword pictureword-paintingdelineationdepictionpicturecharacterization

   Broaderdescription

   Narrowerepithetportrayal
2. 2.

   the act of describing distinctive characteristics or essential features

   “the media's characterization of Al Gore as a nerd”

   Synonymscharacterization

   Broaderdescription

Other forms of characterisation

plural

characterisations·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about characterisation

What does characterisation mean?

characterisation means "a graphic or vivid verbal description". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in characterisation?

characterisation has 7 syllables: cha-rac-te-ri-sa-ti-on. The stress falls on "ti".

What is another word for characterisation?

Close synonyms include word picture, word-painting, delineation, depiction, picture. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is characterisation a common word?

characterisation is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.