imperfect
Pronunciation
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Pronunciation
- (America) IPA: /ɪmˈpɝːfɪkt/, /ɪmˈpɝːfɛkt/
imperfect
- not perfect
- Synonyms: defective, fallible, faultful, faulty
- Antonyms: faultless, infallible, perfect
- c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act IV, scene vi]:
- Why, then, your other senses grow imperfect.
- 1667, John Milton, “Book 8”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:
- Nothing imperfet or deficient left / Of all that he Created.
- 1733, [Alexander Pope], An Essay on Man. […], (
please specify ), London: Printed for J[ohn] Wilford, […], OCLC 960856019 ↗:
- (botany) unisexual: having either male (with stamens) or female (with pistil) flowers, but not with both.
- Antonyms: perfect
- (taxonomy) known or expected to be polyphyletic, as of a form taxon.
- (obsolete) lacking some elementary organ that is essential to successful or normal activity.
- He […] stammered like a child, or an amazed, imperfect person.
- (grammar) belonging to a tense of verbs used in describing a past action that is incomplete or continuous
- German: unvollkommen, mangelhaft, unvollständig, fehlerhaft
- Portuguese: imperfeito
- Russian: несоверше́нный
- Spanish: imperfecto
imperfect (plural imperfects)
- something having a minor flaw
- (grammar) a tense of verbs used in describing a past action that is incomplete or continuous
- Synonyms: preterimperfect
- French: imparfait
- German: Imperfekt, Imperfektum
- Italian: imperfetto
- Portuguese: imperfeito
- Russian: имперфе́кт
- Spanish: imperfecto
imperfect (imperfects, present participle imperfecting; past and past participle imperfected)
- (transitive) to make imperfect
- 1651, John Donne, Letter to Henry Goodere, in Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, edited by Charles Edmund Merrill, Jr., New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1910,
- I write to you from the Spring Garden, whither I withdrew my self to think of this; and the intensenesse of my thinking ends in this, that by my help Gods work should be imperfected, if by any means I resisted the amasement.
- 1716, Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, 2nd edition edited by Samuel Johnson, London: J. Payne, 1756, Part I, p. 43,
- Time, which perfects some things, imperfects also others.
- 1962, Alec Harman and Wilfrid Mellers, Man and His Music: The Story of Musical Experience in the West, Oxford University Press, Part I, Chapter 5, p. 126,
- […] such was their desire for greater rhythmic freedom that composers began to use red notes as well. […] Their value was […] restricted at first, for redness implies the imperfecting of a note which is perfect if black […]
- 1651, John Donne, Letter to Henry Goodere, in Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, edited by Charles Edmund Merrill, Jr., New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1910,
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003