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IMPERFECTION
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The state or an instance of being imperfect
Synonyms:
imperfection; imperfectness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("imperfection" is a kind of...):
state (the way something is with respect to its main attributes)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "imperfection"):
failing; weakness (a flaw or weak point)
flaw (an imperfection in a plan or theory or legal document that causes it to fail or that reduces its effectiveness)
defect (an imperfection in a bodily system)
defect; fault; flaw (an imperfection in an object or machine)
wart (an imperfection in someone or something that is suggestive of a wart (especially in smallness or unattractiveness))
defectiveness; faultiness (the state of being defective)
Antonym:
perfection (the state of being without a flaw or defect)
Context examples:
Upon this conviction, she would not be surprised if even in Henry and Eleanor Tilney, some slight imperfection might hereafter appear; and upon this conviction she need not fear to acknowledge some actual specks in the character of their father, who, though cleared from the grossly injurious suspicions which she must ever blush to have entertained, she did believe, upon serious consideration, to be not perfectly amiable.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
I made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time, “that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents, who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility, among us, was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our young noblemen are bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury; that, as soon as years will permit, they consume their vigour, and contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when their fortunes are almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth, disagreeable person, and unsound constitution (merely for the sake of money), whom they hate and despise. That the productions of such marriages are generally scrofulous, rickety, or deformed children; by which means the family seldom continues above three generations, unless the wife takes care to provide a healthy father, among her neighbours or domestics, in order to improve and continue the breed. That a weak diseased body, a meagre countenance, and sallow complexion, are the true marks of noble blood; and a healthy robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man of quality, that the world concludes his real father to have been a groom or a coachman. The imperfections of his mind run parallel with those of his body, being a composition of spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality, and pride.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
You decide on his imperfections so much in the mass, replied Elinor, and so much on the strength of your own imagination, that the commendation I am able to give of him is comparatively cold and insipid.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Frank Churchill came back again; and if he kept his father's dinner waiting, it was not known at Hartfield; for Mrs. Weston was too anxious for his being a favourite with Mr. Woodhouse, to betray any imperfection which could be concealed.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Only one thing, I know: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that you regretted your own imperfection;—one thing I can comprehend: you intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
