characteristic vs specific

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. 

specific

noun
  • A distinguishing attribute or quality. 

  • The details; particulars. 

  • A remedy for a specific disease or condition. 

  • Specification 

adj
  • of a value divided by mass (e.g. specific orbital energy) 

  • similarly referring to a value divided by any measure which acts to standardize it (e.g. thrust specific fuel consumption, referring to fuel consumption divided by thrust) 

  • Serving to identify a particular thing (often a disease or condition), with little risk of mistaking something else for it. 

  • Hyponyms: monospecific, multispecific, oligospecific, paucispecific 

  • intended for, or applying to, a particular thing. 

  • limited to a particular antibody or antigen. 

  • a measure compared with a standard reference value by division, to produce a ratio without unit or dimension (e.g. specific refractive index is a pure number, and is relative to that of air) 

  • pertaining to a species, as a taxon or taxa at the rank of species. 

  • special, distinctive or unique. 

  • being a remedy for a particular disease on a deeper level, rather than just masking the symptoms 

  • explicit or definite. 

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