Word.ws English Dictionary

defectives

defectives is the plural of defective.

Meaning of defective

Noun

defective (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
  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

See all 8 meanings of defective

Questions about defectives

What is defectives the plural of?
Defectives is the plural of defective.

Words near defectives in the dictionary

  1. defective verb
  2. defective verbs
  3. defectively
  4. defectiveness
  5. defectivenesses
  6. defectives
  7. defectivity
  8. defectless
  9. defectlessness
  10. defectological
  11. defectologist

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: defectives (page history and authors); defective (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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