Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use defective in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, adverb, noun

Defective means having one or more defects. Example: “If the workmanship is defective, they'll replace the shoes with a new pair.”

Examples of defective by meaning

adjectiveHaving one or more defects.

  • If the workmanship is defective, they'll replace the shoes with a new pair.
  • Artillery officers sometimes have defective hearing.
  • 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.2013 March, Harold J. Morowitz, “The Smallest Cell”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 2, United States: Sigma Xi, →ISSN, →OCLC...

nounA 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
  • 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

nounA 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

More sentences with defective

  • The verb can is defective in most English dialects, as it lacks an infinitive.From the entry defective verb
  • The company scrimped on the design so badly that it ended up defective.From the entry scrimp
  • I'll see your defective gallbladder and raise you one heart murmur and a kidney stone.From the entry I'll see you and raise you
  • He offloaded the defective car onto an unsuspecting buyer.From the entry offload
  • These use geometry measurement and imaging to detect abnormalities such as missing or defective fastenings.2026 March 18, Peter Plisner, “Tackling broken rails: the skills and technology improving safety”, in RAIL, number 1057, pages 30-31. From the entry abnormality
  • Suppose we want an ultratiny machine to repair a defective liver.2018, Michael G. Zey, Seizing the Future: Dawn of the Macroindustrial Era. From the entry ultratiny
  • Therefore, the sum of the geometric multiplicities of a defective matrix will be less than n.2007, Thomas S. Shores, Applied Linear Algebra and Matrix Analysis, Springer, page 261. From the entry defective matrix
  • Its damp courses were defective and it was built on top of the tank stream.1985, Peter Carey, Illywhacker, Faber and Faber, published 2003, page 532. From the entry damp course
  • The latter were physically healthy high-grade mental defectives, actively employed, and taken to represent ‘normal controls’.1961, E. J. Field, C. A. Green, Henry Miller, “Response of normal and multiple sclerotic subjects to typhoid-paratyphoid vaccine…. From the entry multiple sclerotic
  • But a Judge may not trifle with the Law because the society is defective.1948, Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country, Penguin, published 1958, Book 2, Chapter 11, p. 171. From the entry trifle
  • But this would mean exposing children to contact with monomaniacs, half-wits, defectives?1926, Henry Louis Mencken, Selected Prejudices, page 175. From the entry half-wits
  • Few persons realize to what extent shoes are misshapened by defective feet.1924 January 4, William M[athias] Scholl, “Ten Simple Exercises to Help Strengthen Your Feet”, in The Mexia Daily News, volume XXVI…. From the entry misshapen
  • One of the two gas-lift pistons was defective.”2024 October 14, Issy Ronald, “Woman killed by malfunctioning ottoman bed”, in CNN. From the entry asphyxia
  • If a pallet is found to contain a defective product it is broken down and checked again by resorters.2017, Denise Thursfield, Post-Fordism and Skill: Theories and Perceptions. From the entry resorter
  • The metachromatic leukodystrophies (MLD) are caused by defective activity of the arylsulfatase enzyme system, with a consequent accumulation of sulfatides.2014, Juan M Bilbao, Robert E Schmidt, Biopsy Diagnosis of Peripheral Neuropathy, Springer, page 429. From the entry metachromatic leukodystrophy
  • On occasions, hyperrecruitment occurs, in which the defective ear perceives loudness greater than the normal ear to the higher intensity levels.2013, R. W. Rieber, Communication Disorders, page 68. From the entry hyperrecruitment
  • It should be typed a space below the salutation : Dear Sir, Subject : Replacement of defective items.2005, Dr BR Kishore, Dynamic Business Letter Writing. From the entry space
  • Their summing-ups were defective and the appeals must be allowed.1995 October 25, Ying Hui Tan, “Directions on defendant’s silence at trial”, in Independent, number 2,814, page 16, column 8. From the entry summing-up
  • Sadie wrestled with the door's defective lock, saying disparagingly, "You seem to be making the running with doctors these days.1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 91. From the entry disparagingly
  • Fortunately, reflectors can be polished or replaced if found defective, thereby considerably improving the efficiency of headlighting on older cars.1940, Ralph A. Richardson, Optics and Wheels, General Motors Corporation, p. 13. From the entry headlighting
  • It is believed that this situation resulted from four factors, excessive use of the eyes, defective lighting, refractive errors, and glare.1920, Washington Institute of Medicine, New York Medical Journal, MD Publications, page 909. From the entry overconcentrated
  • In circumstances of defective ProIAPP processing or hyperamylinaemia, the equilibrium between IAPP forming a heterodimer with insulin may shift towards IAPP homodimerization.2016 February 4, “Identification of Human Islet Amyloid Polypeptide as a BACE2 Substrate”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry hyperamylinaemia
  • But now a study has shown that most cancers are primarily caused by bad luck rather than poor lifestyle choices or defective DNA.2015 January 1, Sarah Knapton, “Most cancers are caused by bad luck not genes or lifestyle, say scientists”, in The Telegraph, archived…. From the entry primarily
  • Overpull occurs when grade A eggs are graded as defective and underpull is when defective eggs are allowed to be included as grade A eggs.2012, V. C. Patel, R. W. McClendon, J. W. Goodrum, “Color Vision and Artificial Nerual Networks for the Detection of Defects in Poultry…. From the entry underpull
  • It makes no lasting sense to retain this as a permanent status quo, using Mary as a cover-up for defective notions of the divine.2000 June 17, Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Mary of Nazareth: Friend of God and Prophet”, in America, volume 182, number 21. From the entry cover-up
  • Only good writers seem to possess it and not all of them, for writers there are whose substance interests despite defective artistry.1913, Carl Henry Grabo, The Art of the Short Story, C. Scribner's Sons, pages 230-231. From the entry overcompression
  • Defective types of psychoses are the most interesting kinds, like the maniacs, the melancholiacs, the phobiacs, the paranoiacs, the neurasthenics, the hysterical, etc.1913, Charles Ellewyn George, The Lawyer & Banker and Bench & Bar Review, volume 6, page 161. From the entry phobiac
  • Many persons miss this option to simply put in a new battery when the old one is defective as the unibody designs started to take over.2016, Michael Galleso, Lg V20: An Easy Guide to the Best Features. From the entry unibody
  • As an extremely sensitive sensor of the tertiary structure of glycoproteins, UGT1 catalyzes the addition of monoglucose to the defective glycoprotein for repair through an unconventional pathway.2016 January 26, “Comparative Proteomics Reveals Important Viral-Host Interactions in HCV-Infected Human Liver Cells”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry monoglucose
  • While Bpp hu and the other classical bordetellae can efficiently colonize mice, Bpp ov strains are severely defective in their ability to colonize the murine respiratory tract.2015 July 10, “Host Specificity of Ovine Bordetella parapertussis and the Role of Complement”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI. From the entry bordetellae
  • It is conceivable that the combined proliferative and maturative defects alone may result in a decreased cell loss and may cause the progressive over-growth of the defective clone.2012, F. Schmalzl, K.-P. Hellriegel, “Preleukemia -- Problems and Trends”, in F. Schmalzl, K.-P. Hellriegel, editor, Preleukemia. From the entry maturative
  • The Samaritan Pentateuch reflects the trend of the plene spellings in the post-Pentateuchal books rather than the defective spellings in the Torah in the Masoretic Text.2011, Emanuel Tov, Computer-Assisted Tools for Textual Criticism. From the entry plene
  • We can say that a message, M, is epistemically defective if either it is false, inappropriate, or connected to other beliefs in ways that are inapt, misleading, or unwarranted.2002, Sheryl Tuttle Ross, “Understanding Propaganda: The Epistemic Merit Model and Its Application to Art”, in Journal of Aesthetic…. From the entry epistemically
  • We have reported that defective accommodation is common in children with Down syndrome" even at 3 months of age;" that is, the children under-accommodate for near targets.2000, Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science. From the entry under-accommodate

Meaning of defective

  1. adjective Having one or more defects.
  2. adjective Lacking some forms; e.g., having only one tense or being usable only in the third person.
  3. adjective Having a root whose final consonant is weak (ي, و, or ء).

Full definition of defective

Questions about defective in a sentence

How do you use defective in a sentence?
Defective is used as an adjective, adverb and noun. For example: “If the workmanship is defective, they'll replace the shoes with a new pair.”
What is a short sentence with defective?
“Artillery officers sometimes have defective hearing.”
What does defective mean?
Defective means having one or more defects.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: defective (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.

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