defective

comparative more defective · superlative most defective

1. Having one or more defects.

   Artillery officers sometimes have defective hearing.

   2 more examples

   If the workmanship is defective, they'll replace the shoes with a new pair.

   It is likely that the long evolutionary trajectory of Mycoplasma went from a reductive autotroph to oxidative heterotroph to a cell-wall–defective degenerate parasite. This evolutionary trajectory assumes the simplicity to complexity route of biogenesis, a point of view that is not universally accepted.

   2013 March, Harold J. Morowitz, “The Smallest Cell”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 2, United States: Sigma Xi, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 04 Jan 2017, page 83

   Synonyms: faulty · Antonyms: complete, perfect, undefective

2. especially a verbgrammarLacking some forms; e.g., having only one tense or being usable only in the third person.
3. ArabicgrammarHaving a root whose final consonant is weak (ي, و, or ء).
4. communicationsNot 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.

   Antonyms: plene

1. not comparableWithout matres lectionis (letters indicating vowels) written out.

   For the sake of comparison, note the distribution of these spellings in some other Hebrew sources: in the MT the vowel o after the first consonant of the root is written defective in approximately 3,600 cases as against 850 cases of plene spelling.

   2013, Gregor Geiger, Plene Writing of the Qōṭēl Pattern in the Dead Sea Scrolls

   Antonyms: plene

plural defectives

1. A person or thing considered to be defective.

   It is an offence, subject to the exception mentioned in this section, for a person to procure a woman who is a defective to have unlawful sexual intercourse in any part of the world.

   1956, Parliament of the United Kingdom, “Part I, section 9(1)”, in Sexual Offences Act 1956, page 3

   1 more example

   There were many more kinds of mental institutions at mid-century, ones for "mental defectives and epileptics" and the mentally retarded, psychiatric wards in veterans hospitals, as well as "psychopathic" and private mental hospitals.

   2007 January 15, Bernard E. Harcourt, “The Mentally Ill, Behind Bars”, in New York Times

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

   Thus, in the Pentateuch and in the earlier prophets the plenes are counted, whilst in the later prophets the defectives are enumerated.

   2011, Christian D. Ginsburg, Jacob Ben Chajim Ibn Adonijah's Introduction to the Rabbinic Bible: Hebrew and English with Explanatory Notes

   Antonyms: plene