What's the difference between character and foible?

Character


Definition:

  • (n.) A distinctive mark; a letter, figure, or symbol.
  • (n.) Style of writing or printing; handwriting; the peculiar form of letters used by a particular person or people; as, an inscription in the Runic character.
  • (n.) The peculiar quality, or the sum of qualities, by which a person or a thing is distinguished from others; the stamp impressed by nature, education, or habit; that which a person or thing really is; nature; disposition.
  • (n.) Strength of mind; resolution; independence; individuality; as, he has a great deal of character.
  • (n.) Moral quality; the principles and motives that control the life; as, a man of character; his character saves him from suspicion.
  • (n.) Quality, position, rank, or capacity; quality or conduct with respect to a certain office or duty; as, in the miserable character of a slave; in his character as a magistrate; her character as a daughter.
  • (n.) The estimate, individual or general, put upon a person or thing; reputation; as, a man's character for truth and veracity; to give one a bad character.
  • (n.) A written statement as to behavior, competency, etc., given to a servant.
  • (n.) A unique or extraordinary individuality; a person characterized by peculiar or notable traits; a person who illustrates certain phases of character; as, Randolph was a character; Caesar is a great historical character.
  • (n.) One of the persons of a drama or novel.
  • (v. t.) To engrave; to inscribe.
  • (v. t.) To distinguish by particular marks or traits; to describe; to characterize.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Moments later, Strauss introduces the bold human character with an energetic, upwards melody which he titles "the climb" in the score.
  • (2) In high concentrations of antiserum, some of the agglutinated cells of L. h. hertigi were enlarged and showed syncytial characters that included up to five nuclei, two dividing nuclei and five basal bodies associated with a single kinetoplast.
  • (3) Recently, it has been proposed that beta-adrenergic receptors of rat fat cells are neither beta 1 nor beta 2 in character but rather an 'isoreceptor,' 'hybrid,' or 'beta 3' [Br.
  • (4) The Nazi party’s office of racial purity claimed that the Jewish character was essentially drug-dependent.
  • (5) This paper discusses the relationship between the psychoanalytic concept of character and the moral considerations of 'character'.
  • (6) One-hundred characters were derived from morphological features, physiological and biochemical activities and SEM micrographs.
  • (7) Diagnosis based on the character of the stridor alone is tenuous, and consideration of presentation other than the stridor is discussed in the management of these infants.
  • (8) The determining component of daily energy consumption is energy consumption during the working period the value of which depends on the character of working activity and duration of the working shift.
  • (9) However, these proskinetic symptoms appeared to be a character trait of an infantile personality rather than a condition following as a consequence of psychosis.
  • (10) At higher concentrations of burimamide, inhibition curves showed distinct evidence of departure from competitive character for both guinea pig and rabbit atria.
  • (11) The whole film is primarily shown from the character's perspective, so 70% of the process involved working with the director of photography [Maxime Alexandre].
  • (12) These last specialized characters are observed, on the contrary, in species parasitic in Lagomorpha.
  • (13) Little deficit in total mesodermal cell number was found, though the entire mesoderm adopted the histological character proper to only some 40% of that in the normal pattern i.e.
  • (14) And Pippi Longstocking, her most famous character, comes really close to being the personified proof of that… So where did Pippi come from?
  • (15) The character was wild and dangerous, psychotic but alluring.
  • (16) Some of the viruses could be differentiated from each other (especially in C. quinoa) by other characters, such as the accumulation of membranes in cell nuclei, or the type of organelle (chloroplasts, mitochondria or peroxisomes) from which multivesicular bodies developed.
  • (17) The term phlegmonous enterocolitis or gastritis defines an acute inflammatory process with purulent or nonpurulent character, that selectively damages the gastric, small and large intestines submucosal layer.
  • (18) I think a long time ago television passed up movies in terms of a reasonable and balanced portrayal of gay characters.
  • (19) With grievous amazement, never self-pitying but sometimes bordering on a sort of numbed wonderment, Levi records the day-to-day personal and social history of the camp, noting not only the fine gradations of his own descent, but the capacity of some prisoners to cut a deal and strike a bargain, while others, destined by their age or character for the gas ovens, follow "the slope down to the bottom, like streams that run down to the sea".
  • (20) I still can’t figure out who this is aimed at: I’m imagining characters who think they’re in Wolf of Wall Street, with such an inflated sense of entitlement that even al desko meals need to come with Michelin tags.

Foible


Definition:

  • (a.) Weak; feeble.
  • (n.) A moral weakness; a failing; a weak point; a frailty.
  • (n.) The half of a sword blade or foil blade nearest the point; -- opposed to forte.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Many of the patients anthropomorphise the seal, enjoy pretending that it is a real, living creature, with all the associated foibles.
  • (2) This week's edition of the FT's How to Spend It, suggests some Christmas foibles – £625 gloves, £705 Black Amber perfume, a £10,000 Boodles bangle.
  • (3) We're given a vivid description, details and foibles, before the town is populated with a cast of characters to rival any soap opera.
  • (4) If the mot juste was always a priority – "I suppose we all have our foibles.
  • (5) The sharp-witted late-night TV star, who regularly skewers the foibles of other celebrities, found himself on the end of the same treatment after being at the centre of a bizarre blackmail plot over the sexual affairs he had with younger female staff members.
  • (6) Children and their services have been prey to causes célèbres, fashion and the exaggerated fads and foibles of the media and politicians; they have thrived best when society and their carers were tolerant, and loving, sought good qualities to augment, not evil to exorcise, and succeeded in balancing structure and control with flexibility and freedom to grow.
  • (7) While cables exposing the foibles of Pakistan's civilian leaders triggered a media feeding frenzy, the press largely ignored revelations that cast the powerful military in a bad light, including its alleged support for Islamist extremist groups such as the Taliban.
  • (8) This is not about the exposure of one man's alleged foibles.
  • (9) We tend not to pin that badge on Ukip because of a paradoxical foible of Britishness that makes imagined immunity from aggressive identity politics a point of national pride.
  • (10) I'm afraid I didn't enjoy either Django Unchained or Inglourious Basterds – they were too self-reverential for my taste – but, as a writer, nobody in the world has a better ear for the foibles and vulnerabilities of his bad guys than Tarantino.
  • (11) Gray was as funny and vicious about his own haplessness as he was about the foibles of others.
  • (12) WS: That Bafta routine of yours in the show was the crux for me – a perfect exemplar of your character’s foibles, because the ambiguity is absolute: Does he care about not winning one or not?
  • (13) By contrast, this collection – which will be available online immediately and in shops in July – celebrated British foibles and eccentricities, in the animal-motif knitwear and eclectic mix of town and country fabrics.
  • (14) The well done steak is not simply a personal foible, like preferring pepperoni pizza to a margarita.
  • (15) And, for all his foibles, Mad-Eye Moody from Harry Potter is a man you'd follow, too.
  • (16) This essay on the last years of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's life exhibits all of Sebald's strengths as a writer – and all of his strange, gnomic, secretive foibles.
  • (17) For example, I've never heard him acknowledge that, in joking about Georgina Sachs's sexual foibles and menstrual cycle , he was demeaning to her.
  • (18) Over the years, scrutiny of Westminster has gradually come to rest on personal foibles, grudges and coups both real and imaginary - a kind of higher office-politics.
  • (19) The emphasis was always on the comedy, the foibles and peccadilloes of the characters, a gentle cynicism about the ways of the world, a joy in puns, a love of irritating footnotes, a relish for the bathetic puncturing of the bombastic – and above all an irrepressible and infectious silliness.
  • (20) None of us is free of foibles and peculiarities that the patient notices sooner or later.