feature
See also: Feature
English
Etymology
From Middle English feture, from Anglo-Norman feture, from Old French faiture, from Latin factūra, from Latin factus, from Latin faciō (“do, make”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- (“to put, place, set”). Doublet of facture.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈfiːtʃə/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈfit͡ʃɚ/
Audio (US) (file) - Rhymes: -iːtʃə(ɹ)
Noun
feature (plural features)
- (obsolete) One's structure or make-up: form, shape, bodily proportions.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938:
- all the powres of nature, / Which she by art could vse vnto her will, / And to her seruice bind each liuing creature; / Through secret vnderstanding of their feature.
-
- An important or main item.
- (media) A long, prominent article or item in the media, or the department that creates them; frequently used technically to distinguish content from news.
- (film) Ellipsis of feature film.
- Any of the physical constituents of the face (eyes, nose, etc.).
- (computing) A beneficial capability of a piece of software.
- 2002, Sam Williams, Free as in Freedom:
- The program contained an internal feature, which allowed a user to update display text after each command keystroke.
-
- The cast or structure of anything, or of any part of a thing, as of a landscape, a picture, a treaty, or an essay; any marked peculiarity or characteristic.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:characteristic
- one of the features of the landscape
- 1911, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:
- The most prominent feature of the New England land system was the town grant, which in every case became the territorial basis of a group settlement.
- (archaeology) Something discerned from physical evidence that helps define, identify, characterize, and interpret an archeological site.
- A feature of many Central Texas prehistoric archeological sites is a low spreading pile of stones called a rock midden. Other features at these sites may include small hearths.
- (engineering) Characteristic forms or shapes of parts. For example, a hole, boss, slot, cut, chamfer, or fillet.
- (statistics, machine learning) An individual measurable property or characteristic of a phenomenon being observed; the input of a model.
- Coordinate term: (output) parameter
- 2022 June 30, Adam Zewe, “Building explainability into the components of machine-learning models”, in MIT News:
- MIT researchers are striving to improve the interpretability of features so decision makers will be more comfortable using the outputs of machine-learning models. Drawing on years of field work, they developed a taxonomy to help developers craft features that will be easier for their target audience to understand.
- (music) The act of being featured in a piece of music.
- (linguistics) The elements into which linguistic units can be broken down.
- Hyponyms: gender, number, person, tense
Derived terms
- albedo feature
- anti-feature
- creature feature
- double feature
- facial feature
- featural
- feature article
- feature back
- feature creep
- feature envy
- feature film
- feature-length
- feature phone
- feature story
- feature wall
- phi-feature
- triple feature
- water feature
Descendants
- → German: Feature
Translations
important or main item
|
long, prominent article or item in the media
|
one of the physical constituents of the face
|
computing: beneficial capability of a piece of software
|
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
|
Verb
feature (third-person singular simple present features, present participle featuring, simple past and past participle featured)
- (transitive) To ascribe the greatest importance to something within a certain context.
- (transitive) To star, to contain.
- (intransitive) To appear, to make an appearance.
- 2009 November 27, “Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child has 'best guitar riff'”, in BBC:
- Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love, Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water and Layla by Derek and the Dominos also featured in the top five.
-
- (transitive, dated) To have features resembling.
- Sunday. Reading for the Young (page 219)
- More than his talents, Roger grudged him his looks, the brown eyes, golden hair, and oval face, which made people say how Johnny Weir featured his mother.
- Sunday. Reading for the Young (page 219)
Translations
ascribe the greatest importance
|
to star, to contain
|
to appear, to make an appearance
|
Further reading
- feature in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
Middle English
Noun
feature
- Alternative form of feture