Antonym of quality

qualitynoun

A quality (Latin qualis, such) — the “suchness” of anything, according to the German idiom — denotes what a thing really is in some one respect; an attribute is what we conceive a thing to be in some one respect; thus, while attribute may, quality must, express something of the real nature of that to which it is ascribed; we speak of the attributes of God, the qualities of matter. “Originally ‘the attributes of God’ was preferred, probably, because men assumed no knowledge of the actual qualities of the Deity, but only of those more or less fitly attributed to him.” J. A. H. Murray. [Murray’s “New English Dictionary”] Holiness is an attribute of God; the attributes of many heathen deities have been only the qualities of wicked men joined to superhuman power. A property (Latin proprius, one’s own) is what belongs especially to one thing as its own peculiar possession, in distinction from all other things; when we speak of the qualities or the properties of matter, quality is the more general, property the more limited term. A quality is inherent; a property may be transient; physicists now, however, prefer to term those qualities manifested by all bodies (such as impenetrability, extension, etc.), general properties of matter, while those peculiar to certain substances or to certain states of those substances (as fluidity, malleability, etc.) are termed specific properties; in this wider use of the word property, it becomes strictly synonymous with quality. Compare CHARACTERISTIC; EMBLEM.