English > character: 10 senses > noun 1, person Meaning | An imaginary person represented in a work of fiction (play or film or story). |
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Example | "she is the main character in the novel" |
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Synonyms | fictional character, fictitious character |
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Instances | Aladdin | In the Arabian Nights a boy who acquires a magic lamp from which he can summon a genie |
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Ali Baba | The fictional woodcutter who discovered that 'open sesame' opened a cave in the Arabian Nights' Entertainment |
Argonaut | (Greek mythology) one of the heroes who sailed with Jason in search of the Golden Fleece |
Arthur, King Arthur | A legendary king of the Britons (possibly based on a historical figure in the 6th century but the story has been retold too many times to be sure) |
Babar | An imaginary elephant that appears in a series of French books for children |
Beatrice | The woman who guided Dante through Paradise in the Divine Comedy |
Beowulf | The legendary hero of an anonymous Old English epic poem composed in the early 8th century |
Bluebeard | (fairytale) a monstrous villain who marries seven women |
Bond, James Bond | British secret operative 007 in novels by Ian Fleming |
Brer Rabbit | The fictional character of a rabbit who appeared in tales supposedly told by Uncle Remus and first published in 1880 |
Bunyan, Paul Bunyan | A legendary giant lumberjack of the north woods of the United States and Canada |
Cheshire cat | A fictional cat with a broad fixed smile on its face |
Chicken Little | A fictional character who was hit on the head with an acorn and believed that the sky was falling |
Cinderella | A fictional young girl who is saved from her stepmother and stepsisters by her fairy godmother and a handsome prince |
Colonel Blimp | A pompous reactionary cartoon character created by Sir David Low |
Don Quixote | The hero of a romance by Cervantes |
Dracula | fictional vampire in a gothic horror novel by Bram Stoker |
El Cid | The hero of a Spanish epic poem from the 12th century |
Emile | The boy whose upbringing was described by Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
Fagin | A villainous Jew in a novel by Charles Dickens |
Falstaff, Sir John Falstaff | A dissolute character in Shakespeare's plays |
Father Brown | A Catholic priest who was the hero of detective stories by G. K. Chesterton |
Faust, Faustus | An alchemist of German legend who sold his soul to Mephistopheles in exchange for knowledge |
Frankenstein | The fictional Swiss scientist who was the protagonist in a gothic novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley |
Frankenstein, Frankenstein's monster | The monster created by Frankenstein in a gothic novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (the creator's name is commonly used to refer to his creation) |
Galahad, Sir Galahad | (Arthurian legend) the most virtuous knight of the Round Table |
Gawain, Sir Gawain | (Arthurian legend) a nephew of Arthur and one of the knights of the Round Table |
Goofy | A cartoon character created by Walt Disney |
Guinevere, Guenevere | (Arthurian legend) wife of King Arthur |
Gulliver | A fictional Englishman who travels to the imaginary land of Lilliput in a satirical novel by Jonathan Swift |
Hamlet | The hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy who hoped to avenge the murder of his father |
Horatio Hornblower, Captain Horatio Hornblower | A fictional English admiral during the Napoleonic Wars in novels written by C. S. Forester |
Houyhnhnm | One of a race of intelligent horses who ruled the Yahoos in a novel by Jonathan Swift |
Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn | A mischievous boy in a novel by Mark Twain |
Iago | The villain in William Shakespeare's tragedy who tricked Othello into murdering his wife |
Inspector Maigret, Commissaire Maigret | A fictional detective in novels by Georges Simenon |
Iseult, Isolde | (Middle Ages) the bride of the king of Cornwall who (according to legend) fell in love with the king's nephew (Tristan) after they mistakenly drank a love potion that left them eternally in love with each other |
John Henry | hero of American folk tales |
Kilroy | A nonexistent person popularized by American servicemen during World War II |
Lancelot, Sir Lancelot | (Arthurian legend) one of the knights of the Round Table |
Lear, King Lear | The hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy who was betrayed and mistreated by two of his scheming daughters |
Lilliputian | A 6-inch tall inhabitant of Lilliput in a novel by Jonathan Swift |
Little John | legendary follower of Robin Hood |
Little Red Riding Hood | A girl in a fairy tale who meets / meets a wolf while going to visit her grandmother |
Marlowe, Philip Marlowe | tough cynical detective (one of the early detective heroes in American fiction) created by Raymond Chandler |
Merlin | (Arthurian legend) the magician who acted as King Arthur's advisor |
Micawber, Wilkins Micawber | fictional character created by Charles Dickens |
Mother Goose | The imaginary author of a collection of nursery rhymes |
Mr. Moto | Japanese sleuth created by John Marquand |
Othello | The hero of William Shakespeare's tragedy who would not trust his wife |
Pangloss | An incurable optimist in a satire by Voltaire |
Pantaloon | A character in the commedia dell'arte |
Perry Mason | fictional detective in novels by Erle Stanley Gardner |
Peter Pan | The main character in a play and novel by J. M. Barrie |
Pied Piper, Pied Piper of Hamelin | The title character in a German folk tale and in a poem by Robert Browning |
Pierrot | A male character in French pantomime |
Pluto | A cartoon character created by Walt Disney |
Raskolnikov, Rodya Raskolnikov | A fictional character in Dostoevsky's novel 'Crime and Punishment' |
Rip van Winkle | The title character in a story by Washington Irving about a man who sleeps for 20 years and doesn't recognize the world when he wakens |
Robin Hood | legendary English outlaw of the 12th century |
Robinson Crusoe | The hero of Daniel Defoe's novel about a shipwrecked English sailor who survives on a small tropical island |
Rumpelstiltskin | A dwarf in one of the fairy stories of the brothers Grimm / Grimm |
Ruritanian | An imaginary inhabitant of Ruritania |
Scaramouch, Scaramouche | A stock character in commedia dell'arte depicted as a boastful coward |
Sherlock Holmes, Holmes | A fictitious detective in stories by A. Conan Doyle |
Shylock | A merciless usurer in a play by Shakespeare |
Simon Legree | The cruel slave dealer in an anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe |
Sinbad the Sailor, Sinbad | In the Arabian Nights a hero who tells of the fantastic adventures he had in his voyages |
Snoopy | A fictional beagle in a comic strip drawn by Charles Schulz |
Svengali | The musician in a novel by George du Maurier who controls Trilby's singing hypnotically |
Tarzan, Tarzan of the Apes | A man raised by apes who was the hero of a series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs |
Todd, Sweeney Todd | fictional character in a play by George Pitt |
Tom Sawyer | The boy hero of a novel by Mark Twain |
Trilby | singer in a novel by George du Maurier who was under the control of the hypnotist Svengali |
Tristan, Tristram | (Middle Ages) the nephew of the king of Cornwall who (according to legend) fell in love with his uncle's bride (Iseult) after they mistakenly drank a love potion that left them eternally in love with each other |
Uncle Remus | The fictional storyteller of tales written in the Black Vernacular and set in the South |
Uncle Sam | A personification of the United States government |
Uncle Tom | A servile black character in a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe |
Walter Mitty | fictional character created by James Thurber who daydreams about his adventures and triumphs |
Yahoo | One of a race of brutes resembling men but subject to the Houyhnhnms in a novel by Jonathan Swift |
Narrower | protagonist, agonist | The principal character in a work of fiction |
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Broader | imaginary being, imaginary creature | A creature / creature of the imagination |
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Spanish | personaje ficticio |
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Catalan | personatge fictici |
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English > character: 10 senses > noun 8, communicationMeaning | A written symbol that is used to represent speech. |
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Example | "the Greek alphabet has 24 characters" |
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Synonyms | graph, grapheme, graphic symbol |
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Narrower | ASCII character | Any member of the standard code for representing characters by binary numbers |
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allograph | A variant form of a grapheme, as 'm' or 'M' or a handwritten version of that grapheme |
asterisk, star | A star-shaped character * used in printing |
capital, capital letter, uppercase, upper-case letter, majuscule | One of the large alphabetic characters used as the first letter in writing or printing proper names and sometimes for emphasis |
check character | A character that is added to the end of a block of transmitted data and used to check the accuracy of the transmission |
dagger, obelisk | A character used in printing to indicate a cross reference or footnote |
double dagger, double obelisk, diesis | A character used in printing to indicate a cross reference or footnote |
ideogram, ideograph | A graphic character that indicates the meaning of a thing without indicating the sounds used to say it |
letter, letter of the alphabet, alphabetic character | The conventional characters of the alphabet used to represent speech |
ligature | Character consisting of two or more letters combined into one |
mathematical symbol | A character that is used to indicates a mathematical ... / mathematical relation or operation |
percent sign, percentage sign | A sign ('%') used to indicate that the number preceding it should be understood as a proportion multiplied by 100 |
phonetic symbol | A written character used in phonetic transcription of represent a particular speech sound |
pictograph | A graphic character used in picture writing |
radical | A character conveying the lexical meaning of a logogram |
rune, runic letter | Any character from an ancient Germanic alphabet used in Scandinavia from the 3rd century to the Middle Ages |
small letter, lowercase, lower-case letter, minuscule | The characters that were once kept in bottom half of a compositor's type case |
space, blank | A blank character used to separate successive words in writing or printing |
stenograph | A shorthand character |
subscript, inferior | A character or symbol set or printed or written beneath or slightly below and to the side of another character |
superscript, superior | A character or symbol set or printed or written above and immediately to one side of another character |
type | Printed characters |
Broader | written symbol, printed symbol | A written or printed symbol |
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Spanish | carácter, grafema, grafía, símbolo gráfico |
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Catalan | caràcter, grafema, grafia |
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Verbs | character | engrave or inscribe characters on |
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