aspect vs characteristic

aspect

noun
  • Any specific feature, part, or element of something. 

  • Position or situation with regard to seeing; that position which enables one to look in a particular direction; position in relation to the points of the compass. 

  • One's appearance or expression. 

  • A grammatical quality of a verb which determines the relationship of the speaker to the internal temporal flow of the event which the verb describes, or whether the speaker views the event from outside as a whole, or from within as it is unfolding. 

  • In aspect-oriented programming, a feature or component that can be applied to parts of a program independent of any inheritance hierarchy. 

  • The way something appears when viewed from a certain direction or perspective. 

  • The way something appears when considered from a certain point of view. 

  • The relative position of heavenly bodies as they appear to an observer on earth; the angular relationship between points in a horoscope. 

  • The personified manifestation of a deity that represents one or more of its characteristics or functions. 

  • The visual indication of a colour light (or mechanical) signal as displayed to the driver. With colour light signals this would be red, yellow or green. 

  • Prospect; outlook. 

  • A phase or a partial, but significant view or description of something. 

verb
  • To have a particular aspect or type of aspect. 

  • To channel a divine being. 

characteristic

noun
  • A distinguishing feature of a person or thing. 

  • For a given field or ring, a natural number that is either the smallest positive number n such that n instances of the multiplicative identity (1) summed together yield the additive identity (0) or, if no such number exists, the number 0. 

  • The integer part of a logarithm. 

  • The distinguishing features of a navigational light on a lighthouse etc by which it can be identified (colour, pattern of flashes etc.). 

adj
  • Being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing. 

How often have the words aspect and characteristic occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )