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.

• (US) IPA^(key): /ɪmˈpɝːfɪkt/, /ɪmˈpɝːfɛkt/

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imperfect (comparative more imperfect, superlative most imperfect)

1. not perfect

   Synonyms: defective, fallible, faultful

   Antonyms: faultless, infallible, perfect

   • (Can we date this quote?) William Shakespeare

     Why, then, your other senses grow imperfect.

   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     Nothing imperfect or deficient left / Of all that he created.

   • (Can we date this quote?) Alexander Pope

     Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in fault; / Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought.

2. (botany) unisexual: having either male (with stamens) or female (with pistil) flowers, but not with both.

   Antonym: perfect

3. (taxonomy) known or expected to be polyphyletic, as of a form taxon.
4. (obsolete) lacking some elementary organ that is essential to successful or normal activity.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Jeremy Taylor

     He […] stammered like a child, or an amazed, imperfect person.

5. (grammar) belonging to a tense of verbs used in describing a past action that is incomplete or continuous

• imperfection

imperfect (plural imperfects)

1. something having a minor flaw
2. (grammar) a tense of verbs used in describing a past action that is incomplete or continuous

   Synonym: preterimperfect

• imperfective

imperfect (third-person singular simple present imperfects, present participle imperfecting, simple past and past participle imperfected)

1. (transitive) 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.

   • 1716, Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, 2nd edition edited by Samuel Johnson, London: J. Payne, 1756, Part I, p. 43,

     Time, which perfects some things, imperfects also others.

   • 1962, Alec Harman and Wilfrid Mellers, Man and His Music: The Story of Musical Experience in the West, Oxford University Press, Part I, Chapter 5, p. 126,

     […] 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 […]