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Defective   Listen
adjective
Defective  adj.  
1.
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.
2.
(Gram.) Lacking some of the usual forms of declension or conjugation; as, a defective noun or verb.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Defective" Quotes from Famous Books



... eighty-seven out of a hundred-and-twenty had been sold by public advertisement for almost nothing. The men-of-war launched from private yards had been the ruin of the navy. Three of them went to Portugal, and were found so defective that it was necessary to send them home, with a frigate for convoy. The arrangements for the naval defence of the country were most admirable and complete, and if there were any delay in building the twenty-three ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... Sir John, tapping his forehead. 'Dear me, how very defective my memory becomes! Varden to be sure—Mr Varden the locksmith. You have a charming wife, Mr Varden, and a most beautiful ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... I cannot remember. I was particularly interested in the apartment devoted to the casts from the statuary in the Louvre and in other palaces. These casts are taken with mathematical exactness, and subjected to the inspection of a committee, who order any that are defective to be broken. Proof casts of all the best works, ancient and modern, are thus furnished at a small price, and so brought within the reach ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... he was instituted in order to screen some legal defect in its execution, or accept an inheritance to which he was instituted merely by word of mouth, or take any testamentary benefit under a document defective in point of law. And there are numerous rescripts of the Emperors Severus and Antoninus to the same purpose: 'for though,' they say, 'the laws do not bind us, yet we live in obedience ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... better than the old district system; but the system of the future will not include a road-scraper except for the building of new roads. Any system is radically defective which scrapes the dust and worn-out soil of the gutters or the turf and loam of the roadside upon the road-bed. Perhaps this kind of repairing is better than none in many localities; but as civilization ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... S. Abondio we miss Luini's childlike grace, and find instead a something that reminds us of Donatello—a seeking after the classical in dress, carriage, and grouping of accessory figures. It may have been that the carver, recognising Luini's defective composition, and finding nothing in that master's manner adapted to the spirit of relief, had the good taste to render what was Luinesquely lovely in his female figures, and to fall back on a severer ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... Hampton, I apprehend no difficulty, and hope to be able to do the enemy great damage. The ammunition issued to my command is very defective. The implements for destroying roads have not yet arrived, but I learn from General Ingalls that they will certainly ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan

... notable differences between the poems and the monuments" (of Mycenae) "in burial, for instance, and in women's dress may be due to changes which arose within the Mycenaean age itself, in that later part of it of which our knowledge is defective—almost as defective as it is of the subsequent 'Dipylon' period. On the whole, the resemblance to the typical Mycenaean culture is more striking than the difference." [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... precipitating themselves upon young and vigorous Europe, which has nourished them for the last two thousand years. But already her fertility is beginning to die out; her productive powers are diminishing every day. Those new diseases that annually attack the products of the soil, those defective crops, those insufficient resources, are all signs of a vitality that is rapidly wearing out and of an approaching exhaustion. Thus, we already see the millions rushing to the luxuriant bosom of America, as a source of help, not inexhaustible indeed, but not yet exhausted. In its turn, ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... of dumb associates. And yet there might not be the slightest discernible difference between his brain and that of a highly intelligent and cultivated person. The dumbness might be the result of a defective structure of the mouth, or of the tongue, or a mere defective innervation of these parts; or it might result from congenital deafness, caused by some minute defect of the internal ear, which only a ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley

... its accompaniment and necessary condition, a corresponding improvement in the notions and principles of logic received among the most advanced thinkers. And if several of the more difficult sciences are still in so defective a state; if not only so little is proved, but disputation has not terminated even about the little which seemed to be so; the reason perhaps is, that men's logical notions have not yet acquired the degree of extension, or of accuracy, requisite for the ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... usually somewhat defective as regards prepuce, urethra, etc.; they may lie side by side, or more rarely may be situated anteroposteriorly; they may be equal in size, or less commonly one is distinctly larger than the other; and one or both may be ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... room. Nor was there any one else in the house at this time likely to recognise Mrs. L'Hommedieu, the janitor and hallboy both being new and Mrs. Latimer one of those proprietors who are only seen on rent day. For the rest, Mrs. L'Hommedieu's defective memory, which had led her to haunt the house and room where the bond had once been hidden, accounted not only for her first visit, but the last, which had ended so fatally. The cunning she showed in turning her cloak and flinging ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green

... face could be found on its pages in which the Mother recognized some of her son's old companions. Portraits, not of the mere formation of mouths and noses, which in so many cases, viewed merely as forms, are defective and unattractive, but portraits of the same faces, upon which the character of the inward mind and heart was so stamped that it threw the mere shape of the ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty

... dissolute men, resigning themselves to the dominion of inordinate passions, commit violations on the lives, liberties, and property of others, and, the secure enjoyment of these having principally induced men to enter into society, government would be defective in its principal purpose, were it not to restrain such criminal acts, by inflicting due punishments on those who perpetrate them; but it appears, at the same time, equally deducible from the purposes of society, that a member thereof, committing ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... the steamship was regarded as an auxiliary. The great three-decker battleships, the smart sailing frigates, were the main strength of navies. The paddle-steamer was a defective type of warship, because her paddle-boxes and paddle-wheels, and her high-placed engines, presented a huge target singularly vulnerable. A couple of shots might disable in a minute her means of propulsion. ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... into expression. It remains for a more profound analysis than the world has yet seen, fully to investigate and express them. Nevertheless he is confirmed in his instinctive opinions by the voice of all his brethren. Let a "composition" be defective; let an emendation be wrought in its mere arrangement of form; let this emendation be submitted to every artist in the world; by each will its necessity be admitted. And even far more than this:—in remedy of the defective ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... a musician, was obliged to employ some person to write his operas and oratorios, which accounts for their being so very defective as poetical compositions. One of those versifiers employed by him, once ventured to suggest, in the most respectful manner, that the music he had composed to some lines of his, was quite contrary to the sense of the passage. Instead of taking this friendly hint as he ought ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various

... as its weakest link. The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang agley if one of the mice is a mental defective or if one of the men is a ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... superiority, thinking what a forgotten, scarce created country it seemed. He was a well-dressed, good-looking fellow, with a keen but pale-gray eye, and a fine forehead, but a chin such as is held to indicate weakness. More than one, however, of the strongest women I have known, were defective in chin. The young man was in the only first-class carriage of the train, and alone in it. Dressed in a gray suit, he was a little too particular in the smaller points of his attire, and lacked in consequence something of the look of a gentleman. Every now and ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald

... to see something of this. She recalled how she had never once gained from him a satisfactory reply to anything she said worth saying; she had in her foolishness supplied from her own imagination the defective echoes of his response! Love had made her apt and able to do this; but now that she had yielded entrance to doubt, she saw many things otherwise than before. She loved the man enough to die for him: she would not have ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... the humourous pieces, when our laughter is excited, I doubt the author himself, who is always discoverable under the masque of whatever character he assumes, is as much the object as the cause of our merriment; and, however moral and devout his more serious views of life, they are often defective in that most engaging feature of sound religion, a cheerful spirit. The only assistance he received was from Richardson, Mrs. Chapone, Miss Talbot, and Mrs. Carter, the first of whom contributed the 97th number; the second, four ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... double lines, a numerous cavalry, an immense artillery occupying a formidable position, in short, every thing, and fortune to boot, which alone is equal to all the rest. On the other side, five thousand soldiers, a straggling and dismembered column, a wavering and languishing march, arms defective and dirty, the greatest part mute ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... was painted too bright for Mr. Bernard's taste, had rather too fanciful a fence before it, and had some fruit-trees planted in the front-yard, which to this fastidious young gentleman implied a defective sense of the fitness of things, not promising in people who lived in so large a house, with a mushroom roof and a triumphal ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... agree as to the meaning of this verb, viz. "to mend, to put in order any thing which is broken or defective." Being used in this sense, Mr. W. differs from Johnson and Todd, and he is inclined to derive Fettle from some deflection of the word Faire, which comes from Latine Facere. I must not crowd your columns further, ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various

... reason for writing thus, and being himself scrupulously honest and careful, he felt this scamped work to be a disgrace to seamen.) If he is so modest as to say, Such and such parts, or the whole of his plan is defective, the Publishers or Vendures will have it left out, because they say it hurts the sale of the work; so that between the one and the other we can hardly tell when we are possessed of a good Sea Chart until ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... to promote pauperism and to multiply criminals. Although population had greatly increased, no new provision had been made for religious teaching, and there were no schools but those of Edward and Elizabeth.[137] Defective poor-laws, which forbade laborers to move from one parish to another in search of work, made pauperism in many cases the inevitable fate of the industrious. In the cities there was no adequate police regulation of the criminal classes; and this, too, at a time when peaceful habits ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... the concurrence of all those that had assumed the province of directing me. That the woman was undone who married below herself, was universally agreed: and though some ventured to assert, that the richer man ought invariably to be preferred, and that money was a sufficient compensation for a defective ancestry; yet the majority declared warmly for a gentleman, and were of opinion that upstarts should ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson

... opening new vistas to her, and which she could afterwards go over with Mrs. Grinstead and Emily and Anna Vanderkist with enthusiasm and comprehension. It was something different from grumbling over the number of candles at St. Kenelm's, or the defective washing ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... we cannot go at once. Akira's attire is pronounced by the messenger to be defective. Akira must don fresh white tabi and put on hakama before going into the august presence: no one may enter thereinto without hakama. Happily Akira is able to borrow a pair of hakama from the landlord; and, after having arranged ourselves as neatly as we ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... cylinders with brandy, screw on the end again, and there you have your props—harmless, innocent props—ready for loading up on the Girondin. Of course, they'd have them marked. Then when they're being unloaded that manager would get the marked ones put aside—they could somehow be defective, too long or too short or too thin or too anything you like—he would find some reason for separating them out—and then at night he would open the things and pour out the brandy, screw them up again and—there ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... of the first things done after reaching town was to hand the cedar canoe over to the local boat builder, and have him put a new garboard streak in the bottom, to take the place of the defective one, which had been bored through and then artfully plugged, in such a way that it would not be noticed, yet must work loose at some time perhaps when far up the river, as we know ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie

... had a round red nose, and very defective teeth. Kew studied him in a new light, for this was Jay's fellow-worker. Somehow ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... January 12, 1858, by the Supreme Court of Ohio, at Columbus. I recognize now more than I did then that my preparation for the profession of the law, which demands knowledge of almost all things, ancient, modern, scientific, literary, historical, etc., was wholly defective. All knowledge is called into requisition by a general and successful legal practitioner. My early deficiency in learning, and the many interruptions in the course of about forty years, have imposed ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... winds. It will be well, indeed, if all your chimneys are made in a similar manner; that is, by enclosing hard-burned glazed pipe in a thin wall of bricks. Such chimneys will not only draw better than those made in the usual way, but there will be less danger from 'defective flues.' A four-inch wall of bricks between us and destruction by fire is a frail barrier, especially if the work is carelessly done or the mortar has crumbled from the joints. To build the chimneys with double ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... discard the classification has prevailed. To draw so straight a line of demarcation as to limit the one entirely to tissue or cell production, and the other to heat and force production through ordinary combustion, and to deny any power of interchangeability under special demands or amid defective supply of one variety, is, indeed, untenable. This does not in the least invalidate the fact that we are able to ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... great pity,' he remarked next day to Sidwell, who had been saying that her brother seemed less vivacious than usual, 'that Buckland is defective on the side of humour. For a man who claims to be philosophical he takes things with a rather obtuse seriousness. I know nothing better than humour as a protection against the kind of mistake ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... a little round-faced man with defective eyesight and an unsuitable nose for the glasses he wore, and he flaunted—God knows ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells

... and wishes upon others. Day after day I worked and thought, and night after night I read and studied, while other boys were seeking pleasure and recreation. Thus, through much discouragement, the years passed by; and thus time went on, until I attained the age of manhood, when, defective sight compelled me to give up the trade I had been acquiring for ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... be defective," said the young student. "I can not read law in great law-offices, like other young men, but I can be just—I can do right; and I would never undertake a case of law, for any money, that I did not think right and just. I would stand for what ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth

... energy—that the two hours devoted to "divinity" are the two most important school hours of the week. And he is quite right: they are the most important, or, rather, but for opportunities missed, they would be. For a liberal education without a foundation in religion is not merely defective, it is impossible. If the religious foundation offered by the teacher proves no foundation, proves a mere meaningless excrescence upon the time-table, then a religion will be sought and found elsewhere, even though it be, as is most likely, ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell

... still went on boosting, but its schemes for self-advertisement resembled a defective pin-wheel, which, after the first whiz, lacks the motive powers to turn further. The motive power in this instance was money. Prouty wanted money with the same degree of intensity that the parched ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... not only speak faithfully to our people in our sermons, but live faithfully for them too. Perhaps it may be found, that the reason why many who preach the gospel fully and in all earnestness are not owned of God in the conversion of souls, is to be found in their defective exhibition of grace in these easy moments of life. "Them that honor me, I will honor," I Samuel 2:30. It was noticed long ago that men will give you leave to preach against their sins as much as you will, if so be you will but be ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar

... stone, an old hermit perfectly painted by nature, sitting near a rivulet, and holding a bell in his hand; and that, in the temple of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, there is to be seen, on a white sacred marble, an image of St. John the Baptist, cloaked with a camel's skin, but so far defective that nature has given him ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... does away with the necessity of any such test as the oil; while I am not prepared to acknowledge or deny the statement, it is well known that much poor pipe is tar-coated and sold in the market as good, and when coated it is almost impossible to detect any but very defective work. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various

... the figure of the king is still defective. We have taken up a lump of fable, and have used more than we needed. Like statuaries, we have made some of the features out of proportion, and shall lose time in reducing them. Or our mythus may be compared to a ...
— Statesman • Plato

... when he sought the foundation of all human knowledge in the even and uneven. All over the world the idea of something complete and perfect is associated with even numbers, and of something imperfect and defective with uneven ones. The ancients, too, considered even numbers of good omen, and uneven ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... wood, and the manner in which the wood was sawed and dried will affect its quality. Knots, splits, checks, and discoloration due to incipient decay are defects worth considering. Wood that looks lusterless is usually defective, because the lack of luster is generally due to disease. Woods that are hard wear best. Hardness can be determined readily by striking the wood with a hammer and noting the sound produced. A clear, ringing sound is a sign of hardness. The strength of a piece of wood ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison

... my first year in Williams College a misfortune occurred which threatened to be very serious. Studying by defective light injured my eyes. They quickly became so sensitive that I could scarcely endure lamplight or the heat of a stove, only the cold out-door air relieving the pain; so I spent much time in wandering about in the boisterous ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... the juvenile efforts of a youth, who has not received the polish of Academical discipline, and who has been but sparingly blessed with opportunities for the prosecution of scholastic pursuits, must necessarily be defective in the accuracy and finished elegance which mark the works of the man who has passed his life in the retirement of his study, furnishing his mind with images, and at the same time attaining the power of disposing those images ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White

... This was her second maid's room. She was Angelica Simpson Jones, sister of Matilda, a poor, diffident creature with defective hearing and pitifully disfigured face. And in the house were Mr. Pyecroft, and Jack and Mary, and Judge Harvey was a frequent visitor. And besides these, there were all ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott

... on, my effort being to keep the small boy interested, not to let him realize that he was learning a lesson, and to convince him that he was merely having a good time. Whether it was the theory or my method of applying it that was defective I do not know, but I certainly absolutely eradicated from his brain any ability to learn what "H" was; and long after he had learned all the other letters of the alphabet in the old-fashioned way, he proved wholly unable to remember "H" ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... support of that opinion so indulgent to pleasure; for they never dispute concerning happiness without fetching some arguments from the principles of religion as well as from natural reason, since without the former they reckon that all our inquiries after happiness must be but conjectural and defective. ...
— Utopia • Thomas More

... untrue, and unjust to our present civilization, unlovely as it undoubtedly is in many ways. It is curious that modern critics of the Greeks have not called attention to the aesthetic obtuseness which showed itself in the defective reaction of the ancients against cruelty. It was not that they excluded beautiful actions from the sphere of aesthetics; they never thought of separating the beautiful from the good in this way. But they were not disgusted at the torture of slaves, the exposure ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... Honor thought defective judgment, made pointed commendations of the tea, the butter and honey, but they had no effect; Honora, though her heart ached for the wrench the poor child had undergone, thought it best to affect indifference, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Washington should show itself under the direction of Congress to be a city with a model form of government, but as long as such authority over public utilities is withheld from the municipal government, it must always be defective. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... cost, and it bears his name. It was opened in 1898 by Lord Peel and Mr. Morley, and for twenty years it has been a center of social work and endeavor in St. Pancras. From it have sprung the Physically Defective Schools under the Education Authority, now so plentiful in London, and so frequent in our other large towns. The first school of the kind was opened at this Settlement in 1898; and the first school ambulance in London was given to us by Sir Thomas Barlow for our ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... feet east of the original position of the gauge. The tall engineer had taken the replacement gauge from his pack and was positioning it into the snow on the surface of the snow pack. The replacement was bulkier than the defective unit and it was ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael

... very feeble, infirm, old man, toiling in the last quarter of my 88th year. I ought to be thankful that my mind, though feeble, remains entire: my memory is often defective, but I have been enabled, though with great labour to myself, and with many interruptions, to dictate a preface to a catalogue published by the university of the older fossils of our collection. They have kindly printed and ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... through limitation in reasoning power, ignorance of the past, or other cause. Some repeat what they have heard, without, examination or reflection; others speak through pessimism or are impelled by that human characteristic which paints as perfect everything that belongs to oneself and defective whatever belongs to another. But it cannot be denied that there are some who worship truth, or if not truth itself at least the semblance thereof, which is truth in the mind of ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal

... the first draughts of laws and constitutions, which were the expression of man's primary needs, the legislator's duty was to reform the errors of legislation; to complete that which was defective; to harmonize, by superior definitions, those things which seemed to conflict. Instead of that, they halted at the literal meaning of the laws, content to play the subordinate part of commentators and scholiasts. Taking the inspirations of the human ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... Louisiana off from all succor or support; and her having on board not more than ten days' provisions, her surrender would be rendered certain in a brief period by the simple method of blockade; and that, in the condition of her motive power and defective steering apparatus, and the immediate danger of attack, she was very liable to capture—it was unanimously recommended that the Louisiana be destroyed, forthwith, to prevent her falling into the hands of the enemy, while it remained ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... are approaching from a singular yet a pleasing stand-point; will you please give me your analysis? If it is good, I will say so; if defective, I will point out ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various

... at her husband's not seeing his way simply to take the poor girl for funny. She even wondered if his sense of fun, or of the funny—which would be his sense of humour, wouldn't it?—were by chance defective. Of course she herself looked at the matter as a person whose present happiness had nothing to grudge to Henrietta's violated conscience. Osmond had thought their alliance a kind of monstrosity; he couldn't imagine what they had in common. For him, Mr. Bantling's fellow tourist was simply ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... and I was therefore at home in time to gather and market the little crop from my six hundred trees. The apples were carefully picked, for they do not bear handling well, and the perfect ones were placed in half-bushel boxes and sent to my city grocer. Not one defective apple was packed, for I was determined that the Four Oaks stencil should be as favorably known for fruit ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... and defective work were arbitrary enough, and made with great formality. "The wardens," say the ordinances, "every quarter, once, or oftener, if need be, shall search in London, Southwark, and Westminster, that all the goldsmiths there dwelling work true gold and silver, according to the Act of Parliament, and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... to do, was the important question that confronted him. To shut down the factory meant great loss and apparent failure. He realized this fully, but he also knew that to go on would simply be to increase the number of defective batteries in circulation, which would ultimately result in a permanent closure and real failure. Hence he took the course which one would expect of Edison's common sense and directness of action. He was not satisfied that the battery ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... and as they are soaked in creosote, they last many years, for light bridges and rough shelters, after they are worn out for railway purposes. The railway company adjoining my land discarded a quantity of these partly defective sleepers, and left them, for a time, lying beside the hedge which separated the line from my fields. I applied to the Company for some, and suggested that they need only be put over the hedge, and I would cart them away. But that is not the routine of the working of such matters; though ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... regards and treats diseases as due to defective or excessive excitation, as sthenic ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... numerous correspondents, that the article contained any record of my own personal experiences. The satire was suggested by the work of an author whose sincerity I do not doubt, and for whose motives I have the highest respect, in order to point out what appears to me the defective morality, from an altruistic and practical point of view, of a system of which he is the principal exponent in this country, and which, under the name of Esoteric Buddhism, still seems to possess some fascination for a certain ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant

... Rievaulx, Lanthony-by-Gloucester, Titchfield. There are a good many short catalogues for smaller houses, written on the fly-leaves of books, which do not, as a rule, help us much. The list of monastic catalogues, however, is dreadfully defective. We have none for St. Albans or Norwich or Crowland or Westminster, for Gloucester or Worcester, St. Mary's, York, or Fountains. What do ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... due appreciation. On the Fils Naturel Lessing has pronounced a severe sentence, without, however, censuring the scandalous plagiarism from Goldoni. But the Pere de Famille he calls an excellent piece, but has forgotten, however, to assign any grounds for his opinion. Its defective plot and want of connexion have been well exposed by La Harpe. The execution of both pieces exhibits the utmost mannerism: the characters, which are anything but natural, become from their frigid prating about virtue in the most hypocritical style, and the tears which they ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... to this Instance out of Mr. Lock another out of the learned Dr. Moor, [4] who cites it from Cardan, in relation to another Animal which Providence has left Defective, but at the same time has shewn its Wisdom in the Formation of that Organ in which it seems chiefly to have failed. What is more obvious and ordinary than a Mole? and yet what more palpable Argument of Providence than she? The Members of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... same physical causes which hold together the stupendous frame of the universe may be recognized even in a drop of rain. The same observation may be applied to the laws of heat in all their ramifications; for, after all, our experiments are, in many instances but defective copies of what is continually going on in ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various

... circuit in case of accidental injury to the feeding mechanism or the carbons of the lamps. This is quite important when a considerable number of lights are operated upon one circuit wire, as a break in the circuit, due to a defective lamp, would result in the extinguishment of all the lights. With the safety device mentioned, such a break does not occur, but the flow of current is preserved ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... of small estimation if the other qualities are defective, it is yet of some consideration, but the larger flowers are apt to be wanting in that perfect hemispherical form ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... Further on it is written: "And therefore is Aima (the Mother) known to be the consummation of all things; and She is signified to be the beginning and the end. . . . And hence that which is not both Male and Female together is called half a body. Now, no blessing can rest upon a mutilated and defective being, but only upon a perfect place and upon a perfect being, and not at all in an incomplete being. And a semi-complete being cannot live forever, neither can ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... concealment, however, we soon discovered that the "large English force" was only a herd of cattle belonging to friendly Boers, and that the camp consisted of two tents occupied by some Englishmen and Kaffirs who were mending a defective bridge. We also came across a cart drawn by four bullocks belonging to a Natal farmer, and I believe this was the first plunder we captured in Natal. The Englishman, who said he knew nothing about any war, received a pass to proceed with his servants to the English ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... must needs have his ear. I well know that De Vallance gained the royal favour by appearing to be your devoted friend, and by praising you for those qualities in which it was Heaven's will to leave you somewhat defective. Thus he praised your prudence, and produced your flight in proof of your innocence; yet, in the same breath, gave some instance of your rashness, and shewed that flight was ever the villain's resource. So contrariwise ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... States has entered upon the coinage of the precious metals, and considerable sums of defective coins and bullion have been lodged with the Director by individuals. There is a pleasing prospect that the institution will at no remote day realize the expectation which was ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson

... by one of Stephenson's own foremen, and differed little from the Killingworth style of locomotive. It was rather over weight, but it ran at times as fast as fourteen miles per hour. Its machinery was defective, however, and it was ruled ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... Berne and Bale, imitated the example of Zurich, where Zwingli committed the government of the Church to the authorities that governed the State, differing from the Lutherans in this, that Zwinglianism was republican and revolutionary. In Germany, where the organisation was defective, there was little discipline or control. In Switzerland there was a more perfect order, at the price of subjection to the secular authority. Those were the rocks ahead; that was the condition of the Protestant churches, when a man arose amongst them with a genius for ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... I remind the reader that this word means here simply the people who speak or have spoken one of the languages called Semitic. Such a designation is entirely defective; but it is one of those words, like "Gothic architecture," "Arabian numerals," which we must preserve to be understood, even after we have demonstrated ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... defective as the terms of the treaties frequently are as regards the definition of tribal boundaries, they are by far the most accurate and important of the means at our command for fixing boundary lines upon the present ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... caused by a lack of vitamin D or calcium and from insufficient exposure to sunlight, characterized by defective ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... and given to them that appearance of reality which only a master hand could impart. His pictures of nature are striking and true; he selects with care that which is appropriate; he rejects the superfluous; and when he has completed his work, it is neither defective nor redundant. The 'Metamorphoses' are read with pleasure by youth, and are re-read in more advanced age with still greater delight. The poet ventured to predict that his poem would survive him, and be read wherever the Roman ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... that we did our duty too well—that, in fact, we made peace on terms too favorable to our own country. In all the pending discussion there seems to be no other fault found. On no other point is the treaty said by any one to be seriously defective. ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid

... to the dwellings of the poor, situated in unhealthy localities, where fresh air does not enter, where the rays of the sun do not penetrate, with defective drainage and imperfect water-supply; but I speak of the nurseries of well-to-do people. 'This will do for our bedroom, and that will make a nice spare room, and that will do for the children,' is what one often hears. Had you rare plants which cost much money to obtain, which ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... difficult to coincide; and it is an illustration of the contradictions of criticism that this very figure should have been selected for especial praise, with particular reference to the charges made against the painter of defective drawing, by another critic who was not only as keenly sympathetic as Hazlitt, but was probably a better anatomist—the author of ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... point of interrupting Marlow when he stopped of himself, his eyes fixed on vacancy, or—perhaps—(I wouldn't be too hard on him) on a vision. He has the habit, or, say, the fault, of defective mantelpiece clocks, of suddenly stopping in the very fulness of the tick. If you have ever lived with a clock afflicted with that perversity, you know how vexing it is—such a stoppage. I was vexed with Marlow. He was smiling faintly while I waited. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... eligible who is so defective in sight, speech, or hearing, or who is otherwise so defective physically as to be apparently unfit to perform the duties of the position to which he is ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... lacking to him; to do for him what he was not clever enough to do for himself; in short, to make an advantageous partnership with him, to which he should furnish the faculty of picking up unconsidered trifles. Tommy judged Clare defective in intellect, and quite unpractical. He was of the mind of the multitude. The common-minded man always calls the man who thinks of righteousness before gain, who seeks to do the will of God and does not seek to make a fortune, unpractical. ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... him of the manner I came into his kingdom, but thought it a story concerted between Glumdalclitch and her father, who had taught me a set of words, to make me sell at a better price. Upon this imagination he put several other questions to me, and still received rational answers, no otherwise defective than by a foreign accent, and an imperfect knowledge in the language, with some rustic phrases, which I had learned at the farmer's house, and did not suit the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... president. In the following year he was succeeded by Reuben Wood. From the year 1821 to 1825, Leonard Case was regularly elected president of the corporation, but neglecting to qualify in the latter year, the recorder, E. Waterman, became president, ex-officio. Here the records are defective until the year 1828, when it appears Mr. Waterman received the double office of president and recorder. On account of ill-health he resigned, and on the 30th of May the trustees appointed Oirson Cathan as president. At the annual election in June, 1829, Dr. David Long was elected ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... spot. Waylett's business might be called the higher tinkering. Sussex has some forty of his bells. He cast the Steyning peal in 1724, and earlier in the same year he had made a stay at Lewes, erecting a furnace there, as Benvenuto Cellini tells us he used to do, and remedying defective peals all around. Among others he recast the old treble and made a new treble for Mayfield. It seems to have been universally thirsty work: the churchwardens' papers contain an account for beer ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... lit, and still worse ventilated, so that on busy days both the clerks and the customers complained of the stuffy atmosphere. The ancient fittings had become worn and defaced; the ceiling was grimy; the conveniences in every way defective. When it was known that a new branch was to be opened the directors of the old Bank resolved that the building, which had so long been found inadequate, should be entirely renovated. They pulled it down, and the present magnificent structure ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies

... as he passed the battery at New York, to find that his courtesy was not returned in the customary way. He complained of the omission as either a mark of disrespect to himself, or an insult to his nation, when it came out in explanation that the garrison was in such a defective state that there were not the appliances at hand ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... Tongiguaq, who jumped and danced in a frenzy of grief. Tongiguaq had lost three children; two had been drowned, and a new-born baby, three months before, was born maimed. According to the custom of the people, a fatherless defective child is doomed to death. So rigorous is their struggle to survive, so limited the means of existence, that a tribe cannot bear the burden of a single unnecessary life. So in keeping with this Lycurgean law, worked out by instinct after the stern experience of ages, a ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... all his triumphs, he stands for the great mass of natural manliness which must be absorbed into art unless art is to be a mere luxury and freak. An appreciation of Scott might be made almost a test of decadence. If ever we lose touch with this one most reckless and defective writer, it will be a proof to us that we have erected round ourselves a false cosmos, a world of lying and horrible perfection, leaving outside of it Walter Scott and that strange old world which is as confused and as indefensible ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... defective in narrative power. He can give us brilliant pictures as in the lines describing the vision of Caesar at the Rubicon[282] or Pompey's last sight of Italy.[283] But such passages are few and far between. Of longer passages there are not perhaps ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... to arrive in three days at Lyons, and then to hasten on into Italy. La Feuillade was besieging Turin. M. d'Orleans went to the siege. He was magnificently received by La Feuillade, and shown all over the works. He found everything defective. La Feuillade was very young, and very inexperienced. I have already related an adventure of his, that of his seizing upon the coffers of his uncle, and so forestalling his inheritance. To recover from the disgrace this occurrence brought ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... curtailed, in order to circumscribe its substance within the limits of a practical drama. Jefferson was blamed for condensing and slightly changing the comedy of The Rivals. Yet the author, who probably knew something about his work, deemed it a wretchedly defective piece, and expressed the liveliest regret for having written it. Wills did not reproduce Goldsmith's Vicar upon the stage: in some particulars he widely diverged from it—and his work, accordingly, may be censured. Yet The Vicar of Wakefield is ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... with a gas bombardment soon after relief on "C" Company's support platoon, who occupied an old "pill-box" near Cite St. Pierre dynamite magazine. The gas appliances were defective at the dug-out entrance, and several men were slightly gassed. At 8-0 a.m. the following morning, the 11th Division on our left carried out a very successful raid. This did not in itself affect us very much, but a bomb-dropping aeronaut during the ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills

... say that Frank Law had passed on his heritage? There was at least a chance that he had not, and it would require more than a remote possibility, more evidence than Ellsworth could summon, to dismay Alaire. Suppose it should transpire that he was somehow defective? What then? The signs of his mental failing would give ample warning. He could watch himself carefully and study his symptoms. He could lead the life of a sentinel perpetually on guard. The thing might never come—or at the worst it probably ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... is not retaliation, my dear Jim, for I fancy I detect a woman's cleverness and a woman's stupidity in this forgery—any access to your secrets or my letters? A woman's villainy is always effective for the moment, but always defective when probed." ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte



Words linked to "Defective" :   bad, unnatural, malfunctioning, abnormal, faulty, defective pleading



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