But I wondered if it had the most essential characteristic of all.
"Business is, essentially, our civilization," Luce said, "for it is the essential characteristic of our times".
Adventure is not simply about danger; its essential characteristic (which King Solomon's Mines deals up in spades) is the unexpected.
The essential characteristic of a public good is that everyone benefits from it even if not everyone pays for it.
Despite her extensive planning, she wanted the pieces to retain an essential characteristic of real things: spontaneity.
Doing things for one another is, in fact, an essential characteristic of a human community.
This compartmentalization was an essential characteristic that distinguishes Romanesque architecture from its Carolingian and Ottonian predecessors.
This essential characteristic of hiding and revealing personalities or moods is common to all masks.
Some newspaper people seem to regard beating the competition as the opposable thumb of journalism, an essential characteristic that distinguishes winners from losers.
As van Breda Kolff will point out, for example, Bradley has "a great reverse pivot," and this is an essential characteristic of a one-on-one specialist.
He will say that "The digital age has made transparency an irresistible, unstoppable force," and that open data "will be the essential characteristic of future public policy".
