How to use defect in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Defect means a fault or malfunction. Example: “The drug thalidomide caused many birth defects and led to an iatroepidemic.”

Examples of defect by meaning

nounA fault or malfunction.

a defect in the ear or eye; a defect in timber or iron; a defect of memory or judgment
But ever since the concept of "hamartia" recurred through Aristotle's Poetics, in an attempt to describe man's ingrained iniquity, our impulse has been to identify a telling defect in those brought suddenly and dramatically low.2014 October 21, Oliver Brown, “Oscar Pistorius jailed for five years – sport afforded no protection against his tragic fallibilities”, in...
Another major defect of the current literature dealing with the nomenclature of hybrid forms of English is the scant attention paid to the question of frequency.2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 4

verbTo abandon or turn against; to cease or change one's loyalty, especially from a military organisation or political...

Independence Party leader, took out an advertisement in The Daily Telegraph this week inviting unhappy Tories to defect.2013 May 23, Sarah Lyall, “British Leader’s Liberal Turn Sets Off a Rebellion in His Party”, in New York Times, retrieved 29 May 2013

verbTo flee one's country and seek asylum.

Passing through Thailand, she submitted a handwritten statement agreeing to defect, a requirement for North Korean refugees to be allowed to enter the South.2015 August 15, Choe Sang-Hun, “A North Korean Defector’s Regret”, in The New York Times, retrieved 20 Sep 2015

More sentences with defect

The drug thalidomide caused many birth defects and led to an iatroepidemic.From the entry iatroepidemic
In most jurisdictions, the job of handling title defects rests primarily with the title company.From the entry title company
Authors are blind to their own defects.From the entry blind
If the insurer refuses to cover the defect in the policy, the client is just going to have to take a view.From the entry take a view
They can carry debilitating diseases like dengue, chikungunya or zika, which can lead to birth defects.2024 October 7, Rachel Wulff, “Invasive yellow fever mosquitoes detected across Sacramento area”, in CBS Sacramento, Sacramento, archived…. From the entry yellow-fever mosquito
Soil erosion may sometimes produce defects with smooth edges that may imitate remodeled margins.2023, Simon Mays, “The Macroscopic Study of Human Skeletal Paleopathology” (chapter 2), in The Routledge Handbook of Paleopathology…. From the entry treponemal
This can be categorized as size, shape, or a color defect.2021, W. M. M. Botejue, L. Ranathunga, “A Guided Visual Feature Generation and Classification Model for Fabric Artwork Defect Detection”…. From the entry facial hair
Already engaging in gallows humor, I wondered if Mattis was defecting.2020 June 23, John Bolton, The Room Where It Happened, →ISBN, page 142. From the entry gallows humor
Outgassing of hydrogen was detected from the holelike defects on the treated surface.2019 October 30, Naoya Miyauchi, Tomoya Iwasawa, Taro Yakabe, Masahiro Tosa, Toyohiko Shindo, Shoji Takagi, Akiko N. Itakura…. From the entry holelike
However, hydrogen was not released from all the holelike defects seen in the SEM image.2019 October 30, Naoya Miyauchi, Tomoya Iwasawa, Taro Yakabe, Masahiro Tosa, Toyohiko Shindo, Shoji Takagi, Akiko N. Itakura…. From the entry holelike
On CT scan, a deformed right femoral head with postpinning defect, articular changes, and subluxation was visualized.2015 June 3, Nagmani Singh et al., “External Iliac Artery-Appendicular Fistula due to Antegrade Unusual Migration of K-Wire from Hip to…. From the entry postpinning
D) Pseudoaneurysm sac and the defect on the left ventricular wall Dor ventriculoplasty.2015 June 30, Tevfik Güneş et al., “Surgical treatment of giant cardiac aneurysm with pseudoaneurysm in a colon carcinoma patient”, in…. From the entry ventriculoplasty
As a consequence, the equivalence preserves defect groups and categories of subpairs.2015, Cédric Bonnafé, Jean-François Dat, Raphaël Rouquier, “Derived categories and Deligne-Lusztig varieties II”, in arXiv. From the entry subpairs
Freedom from all defects and imperfections, diseases, and distempers, infirmities and deformities, maimedness and monstrous shapes.2014, Thomas Bolton, The Four Last Things: Death, Judgement, Hell, and Heaven. From the entry maimedness
A car that feels limp and soggy usually has a suspension defect that requires attention.2013, Robert Foskett, Alfa Romeo 916 GTV and Spider: The Complete Story. From the entry rollbar
Regardless of what the other player does, you get a higher payoff by defecting than cooperating.2012, Satoshi Kanazawa, The Intelligence Paradox, →ISBN. From the entry one-shot
In one-shot games, there is nothing the other can do to punish you for defecting.2012, Satoshi Kanazawa, The Intelligence Paradox, →ISBN. From the entry one-shot
Mutants can then cooperate with those who share the secret handshake and defect against the others.2012, Jan van Eijck, Rineke Verbrugge, Games, Actions, and Social Software: Multidisciplinary Aspects, page 176. From the entry secret handshake
The amplitude or phase image is used for non-destructive subsurface defect detection in solids.2010 June 10, Liu Junyan, Wang Yang and Dai Jingmin, “Research on thermal wave processing of lock-in thermography based on analyzing image…. From the entry wave processing
It's actually doing a reasonable job of unblurring the artificially blurred image with only a few defects.2009, Bruce Fraser, Jeff Schewe, Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom. From the entry unblur
A genetic defect might metaphorically be referred to as a "Mark of Cain"2009, quarkstomper, “Mark Of Cain”, in The Arcana Wiki. From the entry mark of Cain
Craniorachischisis and anencephaly represent the most extensive of the neural tube defects.2007, Colin Smith, “26: Malformations of the Nervous System and Hydrocephalus”, in Jean W. Keeling, T. Yee Khong, editors, Fetal and…. From the entry craniorachischisis
In type A structures, the photonic crystal cladding has even symmetry along the center of the defect.2004, Optics Letters - Volume 29, Pages 417-912 - Page 861. From the entry evenlike
Still another expert concluded that the vehicle was not crashworthy, a design defect.2003, George A. Peters, Barbara J. Peters, Automotive Vehicle Safety, page 19. From the entry fireworthy
The biggest defect in Tiatr is that till now there has not been classification.2002, Mario Cabral e Sá, Redefining horizons: Goa, four decades of freedom, page 116. From the entry tiatr
First of all , I should inform you that a lot of Vilmanians have already defected.1996, Friends of Jung Society Philippines, Jung Festival '95: A Glimpse Into the Collective Unconscious, page 64. From the entry Vilmanian
In most instances angular defects have accompanying infrabony pockets; infrabony pockets always have an underlying angular defect.1986, Fermin A. Carranza, Dorothy A. Perry, Clinical Periodontology for the Dental Hygienist, page 62. From the entry angular defect
What causes this resistance is among the great mysterious defects of national life.1986, Management Today. From the entry sunriser
Neonates with abrachia have dysplasia of the spinal cord segment corresponding to the leg defect.1984, Harold Kalter, Issues and Reviews in Teratology, volume 2, page 103. From the entry abrachia
After a lifetime of dutifully cooking roasts in a moderate oven, I've defected to the searers' camp.1982, Ladies' Home Journal, volume 99, page 98. From the entry searer
Students lapse to interjectural speech, gibberish, mimic any dialect, brogue, defect and affectation of speech.1969, Granville Stanley Hall, Adolescence, volume 2, page 403. From the entry interjectural
Without excesses or defects, they combine the valuable qualities of youth and old age.1969, Lewis Samuel Feuer, The Conflict of Generations: The Character and Significance of Student Movements, New York, N.Y: Basic Books…. From the entry juvenocratic
But then I remember all of my other defects.2024, anonymous, quoted in Václav Báča, "Hierarchy at the Bottom of the Hierarchy: Involuntary Celibates, Identity, and Race", thesis…. From the entry ascension
Those with subnormal intelligence were considered idiots, moderate mental deficients were imbeciles, and debiles were those with mild mental defects.2023, Mark M. Rich, Invisible Eugenics: How the Medical System and Public Schools Are Killing Your Children, 2nd edition. From the entry debile
The newborn examination confirms the diagnosis of amelia and distinguishes it from other limb deficiencies (e.g. terminal transverse defects) and sirenomelia.2020, Birth Defects Surveillance: A Manual for Programme Managers, 2nd edition, World Health Organization, page 119. From the entry amelia

Meaning of defect

noun A fault or malfunction.
noun The quantity or amount by which anything falls short.
noun A part by which a figure or quantity is wanting or deficient.

Full definition of defect

Questions about defect in a sentence

How do you use defect in a sentence?: Defect is used as a noun and verb. For example: “The drug thalidomide caused many birth defects and led to an iatroepidemic.”
What is a short sentence with defect?: “Authors are blind to their own defects.”
What does defect mean?: Defect means a fault or malfunction.

Adapted from Wiktionary: defect (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use defect in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/defect. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.