Character (A).
An oddity. One who has a distinctive peculiarity of manner: Sam Weller is a character, so is Pickwick. And Sam Weller’s conduct in the law-court was “in character,” but had he betrayed his master it would have been “out of character.”
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.