imperfect
/ɪmˈpɜː(ɹ)fɪkt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.45 in modern English
18
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Not perfect.
adj
Unisexual: having either male (with stamens) or female (with pistil) flowers, but not with both.
adj
Known or expected to be polyphyletic, as of a form taxon.
adj
Representing a continuing or repeated action.
noun
A tense of verbs used in describing a past action that is incomplete or continuous.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
Inflected Forms
more imperfect (comparative)
most imperfect (superlative)
imperfects (plural)
imperfects (present, singular)
imperfecting (participle, present)
imperfected (participle, past)
imperfected (past)