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What charecteristics define a wave for a physicist?

Any superposition $y(x,t)=f_1+f_2$, of two arbitrary function $f_1(x-vt)$ and $f_2(x+vt)$ of $x\pm vt$ satisfies the wave equation in one-dimension. Will it be called a wave if the function $y(x,t)$ doesn't have any periodicity? For example, consider the aperiodic functions $y(x,t)=A\exp[-\frac{(x-vt)}{L}]$ or $y=A(x-vt)^2$ which satisfies the one-dimensional wave equation but nothing is "waving" or "repeating" for this functions.

SRS
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