How a Greek tool for scratching and stamping marks gave us letters, Chinese characters, people in stories and your personality. Tap ▶ to hear each step read aloud.
The Greek verb kharássein meant to scratch, to cut, to engrave. Its older roots are not certain: it may come from an Indo-European root meaning to scrape.
A kharaktḗr was the tool that stamps a mark, like the die that stamps a coin, and then the mark itself.
A mark you write is a sign, so a character became a letter or written symbol.
That is why 汉字 are called Chinese characters in English, and a computer counts “characters”.
Around 300 BC, the Greek writer Theophrastus wrote Characters: short funny portraits of types of people, the Flatterer, the Boaster, the Grumbler. Each person has their own mark, their own nature.
From the 1600s, a character was also a person in a play or a novel.
Examples: the main character
, a cartoon character
.
Your character is also who you are inside: your qualities and your strength.
Examples: a woman of character
, that’s out of character for him
, he’s quite a character!
(an unusual, funny person).
| characteristic | a typical mark or quality |
| to characterise | to describe the typical marks |
| character set | the letters a computer knows |
Caractère covers the letter (en gros caractères) and the personality (il a du caractère). For a person in a story, French says un personnage.
“A character is the mark that makes you, you.”