• (America) IPA: /ɪmˈpɝːfɪkt/, /ɪmˈpɝːfɛkt/

imperfect

1. 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 ↗:

2. (botany) unisexual: having either male (with stamens) or female (with pistil) flowers, but not with both.

   Antonyms: perfect

3. (taxonomy) known or expected to be polyphyletic, as of a form taxon.
4. (obsolete) lacking some elementary organ that is essential to successful or normal activity.

   • He […] stammered like a child, or an amazed, imperfect person.

5. (grammar) belonging to a tense of verbs used in describing a past action that is incomplete or continuous

• imperfection

• German: unvollkommen, mangelhaft, unvollständig, fehlerhaft
• Portuguese: imperfeito
• Russian: несоверше́нный
• Spanish: imperfecto

imperfect (plural imperfects)

1. something having a minor flaw
2. (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)

1. (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 […]