imperfect
adjectivenounverbattested in dialogue
- //ɪmˈpɜː(ɹ)fɪkt//
- //ɪmˈpɜː(ɹ)fɛkt//
- //ɪmpə(ɹ)ˈfɛkt//
Not perfect.
adjective
- 1
Not perfect.
Why, then, your other senses grow imperfect.
Nothing imperfet or deficient left Of all that he Created.
Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in fault; / Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought.
- 2
Unisexual: having either male (with stamens) or female (with pistil) flowers, but not with both.
- 3
Known or expected to be polyphyletic, as of a form taxon.
- 4
Representing a continuing or repeated action.
- 5
obsoleteLacking some elementary organ that is essential to successful or normal activity.
When the prophet Joel was describing the formidable accidents in the day of the Lord's judgment, and the fearful sentence of an angry Judge, he was not able to express it, but stammered like a child, or an amazed, imperfect person.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *né Proto-Indo-European *n̥- Proto-Italic *n̥- Latin im- Proto-Indo-European *per-der. Proto-Italic *peri- Latin per- Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁k- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *dʰh₁kyéti Proto-Italic *θakjō Proto-Italic *fakjō Latin faciō Latin perficiō Proto-Indo-European *-tus Proto-Italic *-tus Latin -tus Latin perfectus Latin imperfectusder. Old French imparfitder. Middle English imperfit English imperfect From Middle English imperfit, from Old French imparfit (modern French imparfait), from Latin imperfectus. Spelling modified 15c. to conform Latin etymology. See im- + perfect.
noun
- 1
Something having a minor flaw.
- 2
A tense of verbs used in describing a past action that is incomplete or continuous.
verb
- 1
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.
Time, which perfects some things, imperfects also others.
[…] 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 […]
Forms
- plural
- imperfects
- comparative
- more imperfect
- superlative
- most imperfect
- past tense
- imperfected
- past participle
- imperfected
- present participle
- imperfecting
- third person singular
- imperfects