imperfect
verb
- to impair perfection; to render imperfect
noun
- cleavage quality
adjective
- having flaws
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ɪmˈpɜː(ɹ)fɪkt/ / /ɪmˈpɜː(ɹ)fɛkt/ / /ɪmpə(ɹ)ˈfɛkt/
adj
Etymology: From Middle English imperfit, from Old French imparfit (modern French imparfait), from Latin imperfectus. Spelling modified 15c. to conform Latin etymology. See im- + perfect.
- Not perfect,
“Why, then, your other senses grow imperfect.”
“Nothing imperfet or deficient left Of all that he Created.”
- Unisexual: having either male (with stamens) or female (with pistil) flowers, but not with both.
- Known or expected to be polyphyletic, as of a form taxon.
- Representing a continuing or repeated action.
- Lacking 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.”
noun
Etymology: From Middle English imperfit, from Old French imparfit (modern French imparfait), from Latin imperfectus. Spelling modified 15c. to conform Latin etymology. See im- + perfect.
- Something having a minor flaw.
- A tense of verbs used in describing a past action that is incomplete or continuous.
verb
Etymology: From Middle English imperfit, from Old French imparfit (modern French imparfait), from Latin imperfectus. Spelling modified 15c. to conform Latin etymology. See im- + perfect.
- 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.”