quality

quality 1 Quality, property, character, attribute, accidentall denote one of the intelligible marks or indications by means of which a thing may be identified or its constitution be understood.

Quality is the term of widest application and may designate any such mark, material or immaterial, individual or generic

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distinguishing qualities of iron are tensile strength and corrosiveness

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there was only one quality in a woman that appealed to him—charm— Galsworthy

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the persistent contemporariness that is a quality of all good art— Huxley

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her self-conscious . . . awkwardness lent her a dangerous amateur quality— Salinger

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A property is a quality that is proper to a species or type; it therefore belongs to a thing by virtue of that thing's true or essential nature

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the eye has this strange property: it rests only in beauty— Woolf

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rhythm is a property of words— Rickword

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Sir Joseph Thomson . . . pointed out that weight is only an "apparently" invariable property of matter— Ellisy}}

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A character is a peculiar or distinctive quality more often of a class than of an individual. The term is used especially in scientific and philosophical writing with reference to the properties which distinguish an isolable subgroup (as a species) within a larger group (as a genus)

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wheat and oats share the properties of cereal grasses but have specific characters that clearly differentiate them

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hauynite and noselite show characters like sodalite, but they differ from it in containing the radical S04 in the place of chlorine— Pirsson

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An attribute is a quality that is ascribed to a thing. The term may imply a lack of definite knowledge of the thing in question; thus, one can speak of the attributes of God, meaning the qualities men ascribe to him

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to endow her with all the attributes of a mythological paragon upon Olympus— Wylie

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historical personages become invested with romantic attributes— Wright

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More often attribute denotes a quality that, though ascribed, is felt as an essential concomitant which must belong to a thing by reason of its nature

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mercy is . . . an attribute to God himself— Shak.

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this Confederation had none of the attributes of sovereignty in legislative, executive, or judicial power— Taney

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An accident basically is a nonessential trait; in philosophical use, however, the term often means one of the qualities by which a thing manifests itself and implies, therefore, a contrast with the substance—or the real, but unapparent, nature—of the thing

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waves [on a Japanese artist's screen] such as these, divested of all accident of appearance, in their naked impetus of movement and recoil— Binyon

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In more general use accident usually implies fortuitousness or lack of intrinsic value

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rhyme is ... an accident rather than an essential of verse— Lowes

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Certainly many mystics have been ascetic. But that has been the accident of their philosophy, and not the essence of their religion— Ellis

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Analogous words: predication, affirmation (see corresponding verbs at ASSERT): peculiarity, individuality, characteristic (see corresponding adjectives at CHARACTERISTIC)

2 Quality, stature, caliber are often interchangeable as indicating, when used without modifiers, distinctive merit or superiority.

Quality implies a complex of qualities (see QUALITY 1) and is therefore always singular in use. The term usually implies a high order of excellence, virtue, strength of character, or worth

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splendid writing, of course, but to no purpose .... It's not quality we look for in a novel, but mileage— Purdy

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they're all made by machinery now. The quality may be inferior, but that doesn't matter. It's the cost of production that counts— Dahl

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this little Tania had quality; she carried her scars without a whimper— Bambrick

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Stature implies that the one considered has reached or is in process of reaching the height or greatness possible to one of his kind

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probings in the realms of life and matter have seemed to diminish man's stature and to belittle his dignity— Marquand

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every piece of work you do adds something to your stature, increases the power and maturity of your experience— Wolfe

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Caliber suggests extent or range especially of one's mind or powers; it may connote unusual but measurable range, scope, or breadth of ability or intellect but often depends on qualification to supply a standard of reference or comparison or to indicate the direction of deviation from the norm

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a man of high moral caliber

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the milieu of her youth where the size of the engagement ring determines the caliber of the bridegroom— Geismar

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is at his relaxed best because he is accompanied by musicians of the first caliber— John Hammond

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pundits of big and little caliber— Craig Thompson

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Analogous words: *excellence, virtue: value, *worth