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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

defective.

Having one or more defects.

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/dɪˈfɛktɪv/UK
  1. Having one or more defects.

    If the workmanship is defective, they'll replace the shoes with a new pair.
    Artillery officers sometimes have defective hearing.
  2. Lacking some forms; e.g., having only one tense or being usable only in the third person.

  3. Having a root whose final consonant is weak (ي, و, or ء).

    Arabic
  4. Not capable of representing all the phonemic distinctions of a language it is used to write.

  5. Spelled without matres lectionis, for example אמץ (ómets, “courage”) as opposed to the plene spelling אומץ where the letter vav ⟨ו⟩ indicates the vowel o.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English defectif, defective, from Old French defectif, from Late Latin dēfectīvus.

adv/dɪˈfɛktɪv/UK
  1. Without matres lectionis (letters indicating vowels) written out.

    not-comparable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English defectif, defective, from Old French defectif, from Late Latin dēfectīvus.

noun/dɪˈfɛktɪv/UK
  1. A person or thing considered to be defective.

  2. A word written without matres lectionis (letters indicating vowels).

Where this word comes from

From Middle English defectif, defective, from Old French defectif, from Late Latin dēfectīvus.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.