Distinctive characters about to abandon race with gold (5)
I believe the answer is:
aurae
'distinctive characters' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both human attributes as well as being plural nouns.
Perhaps there's an association between them I don't understand?
'about to abandon race with gold' is the wordplay.
'about' is a reversal indicator.
'to abandon race' becomes 'ear' (I can't justify this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'with' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'gold' becomes 'Au' (Au is the chemical symbol for gold).
'ear' backwards is 'rae'.
'rae' after 'au' is 'AURAE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for aurae that I've seen before include "Haloes" , "airs" .)