Typical
Part of speech: adjective
Definition: Capturing the overall sense of a thing; representing something by form.
Example sentence: I never took guitar lessons. I took classical piano lessons from the age of six when we lived in Holland. And when we moved to America, it was just the typical thing except I was really good at it; so was my brother.
Characteristic
Part of speech: adjective
Definition: being a distinguishing feature of a person or thing
Part of speech: noun
Definition: a distinguishable feature of a person or thingthe integer part of a logarithmthe distinguishing features of a navigational light on a lighthouse etc by which it can be identified (colour, pattern of flashes etc)
Example sentence: The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.