DEFECTIVE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Defective

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/dɪfˈɛktɪv/ Listen

adjective

Defective adj.

Wanting in something; incomplete; lacking a part; deficient; imperfect; faulty; applied either to natural or moral qualities; as, a defective limb; defective timber; a defective copy or account; a defective character; defective rules.

(Gram.) Lacking some of the usual forms of declension or conjugation; as, a defective noun or verb.

noun

Defective n.

Anything that is defective or lacking in some respect.

(Med.) One who is lacking physically or mentally. Note: Under the term defectives are included deaf-mutes, the blind, the feeble-minded, the insane, and sometimes, esp. in criminology, criminals and paupers.

See images of 'Defective'

Etymology of 'Defective'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Defective" Quotes from Famous Books

... and betrayers, of the decision of this issue and that, and then of his last years of misery, of fluctuating resolves, and at last of his strenuous studies. In a little while he perceived he had it all again; dim perhaps, like metal long laid aside, but in no way defective or injured, capable of re-polishing. And the hue of it was a deepening misery. Was it worth re-polishing? By a miracle he had been lifted out of a life ...

— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... all. Random remarks here and there, being pieced together gave Laura a vague impression of a man of fine presence, abort forty-three or forty-five years of age, with dark hair and eyes, and a slight limp in his walk—it was not stated which leg was defective. And this indistinct shadow represented her father. She made an exhaustive search for the missing letters, but found none. They had probably been burned; and she doubted not that the ones she had ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... was perfected into an establishment, out of imperious necessity, in after times. Men were appointed to determine between the effects of divine inspiration and human imagination; to judge between the cool and the sound; and the enthusiastic and the defective; and to put a bridle as it were upon those who were not likely to become profitable labourers in the harvest of the Gospel. And as this office was rendered necessary on account of the principle that no ...

— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... imperil the success of the season's sledging. He decided, therefore, to send three men back from the 80 S. depot, which he reached on January 6, 1916. Cope, Gaze, and Jack were the men to return. They took the defective Primus and a light load, and by dint of hard travelling, without the aid of dogs, they reached Cape Evans ...

— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton

... proportion as we have approached nearer to the ideal of a representative government, elected by a perfectly free universal suffrage, in that same proportion have its essential vices become manifest to us, till we have clearly seen that this mode of government is radically defective. Is it not indeed absurd to take a certain number of men from out the mass, and to entrust them with the management of all public affairs, saying to them, "Attend to these matters, we exonerate ourselves from the task by laying it upon you: it is for you to make laws on all manner of ...

— The Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution - An Address Delivered in Paris • Pierre Kropotkin

More quotes...