DEFECT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Defect

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/dˈifɛkt/ /dɪfˈɛkt/ Listen

noun

Defect n.

Want or absence of something necessary for completeness or perfection; deficiency; opposed to superfluity. "Errors have been corrected, and defects supplied."

Failing; fault; imperfection, whether physical or moral; blemish; as, a defect in the ear or eye; a defect in timber or iron; a defect of memory or judgment. "Trust not yourself; but, your defects to know, Make use of every friend and every foe." "Among boys little tenderness is shown to personal defects."

Synonyms: Deficiency; imperfection; blemish. See Fault.

verb

Defect v. t. To injure; to damage. "None can my life defect." (R.)

Defect v. i.

To fail; to become deficient. (Obs.) "Defected honor."

To abandon one country or faction, and join another.

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Etymology of 'Defect'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Defect" Quotes from Famous Books

... among the same number of whites. There is another peculiarity which I have remarked among the women here—very considerable beauty in the make of the hands; their feet are very generally ill made, which must be a natural, and not an acquired defect, as they seldom injure their feet by wearing shoes. The figures of some of the women are handsome, and their carriage, from the absence of any confining or tightening clothing, and the habit they have of balancing great weights on ...

— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble

... Macdonald repent of his agreeing to join the shooting party that day. Owing to some defect in his vision or nervous system, he was a remarkably bad shot, though in everything else he was an expert and stalwart backwoodsman, as well as a good scholar. But when his friend Victor invited him he could not refuse, because it offered him an opportunity ...

— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne

... back on the ugly idea that the man was dumb. He hardly knew why it was so ugly an idea, but it affected his imagination in a dark and disproportionate fashion. There seemed to be something creepy about the idea of being left in a dark room with a deaf mute. It was almost as if such a defect were a deformity. It was almost as if it went with other and worse deformities. It was as if the shape he could not trace in the darkness were some shape that should ...

— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... "That is the defect in your policy. It is the existence of your system of slavery that makes you all this trouble." "As I told you of Miss Chandler, so it is with you, because you never lived in a slave State, and know nothing of their contented ...

— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... of some of our acquaintance we deplore its non-existence, but never in ourselves. Nobody really believes that he is wholly without it, partly because, in proportion as the sense is really defective, the defect must be in its own nature unperceived, but also because the gift is so precious, so winsome, that no one could bear to believe that it has been denied him. By a merciful law of nature, the delusion is unsuspected, for assuredly, if any wholly unhumorous person once realised the full extent of ...

— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

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