Noun

(uncountable) The quality of being different.

(countable) A characteristic of something that makes it different from something else.

* {{quote-magazine, title=Towards the end of poverty

, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838, page=11, magazine=(The Economist) citation , passage=But poverty’s scourge is fiercest below $1.25 (the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines, measured in 2005 dollars and adjusted for differences in purchasing power): people below that level live lives that are poor, nasty, brutish and short.}}

(countable) A disagreement or argument.

We have our little differences , but we are firm friends.

* Shakespeare

What was the difference ? It was a contention in public.

* T. Ellwood

Away therefore went I with the constable, leaving the old warden and the young constable to compose their difference as they could.

(countable, uncountable) Significant change in or effect on a situation or state.

* 1908 , (Kenneth Grahame), (The Wind in the Willows)

The line of the horizon was clear and hard against the sky, and in one particular quarter it showed black against a silvery climbing phosphorescence that grew and grew. At last, over the rim of the waiting earth the moon lifted with slow majesty till it swung clear of the horizon and rode off, free of moorings; and once more they began to see surfaces—meadows wide-spread, and quiet gardens, and the river itself from bank to bank, all softly disclosed, all washed clean of mystery and terror, all radiant again as by day, but with a difference that was tremendous.

(countable) The result of a subtraction; sometimes the absolute value of this result.

(obsolete) Choice; preference.

* Spenser

That now be chooseth with vile difference / To be a beast, and lack intelligence.

(heraldry) An addition to a coat of arms to distinguish two people's bearings which would otherwise be the same. See augmentation and cadency.

(logic) The quality or attribute which is added to those of the genus to constitute a species; a differentia.

(logic circuits) A Boolean operation which is TRUE when the two input variables are different but is otherwise FALSE; the XOR operation ($\backslash scriptstyle\; A\; \backslash overline\; B\; +\; \backslash overline\; A\; B$).

(relational algebra) the set of elements that are in one set but not another ($\backslash scriptstyle\; A\; \backslash overline\; B$).

Noun

(en noun)

(label) One's structure or make-up; form, shape, bodily proportions.

* 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , IV.ii:

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.

(label) A long, prominent, article or item in the media, or the department that creates them; frequently used technically to distinguish content from news.

Any of the physical constituents of the face (eyes, nose, etc.).

(label) A beneficial capability of a piece of software.

*

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; as, one of the features of the landscape.

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(label) 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.

(label) Characteristic forms or shapes of a part. For example, a hole, boss, slot, cut, chamfer, or fillet.