Word of the Day: Perfect

per-fect / pərfikt

adjective

1.      being entirely without defect; flawless

Nobody’s perfect, but all of us can be better than we are.

Jackie Stewart, 1939-

2.      accurate

Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.

Walter Benjamin, 1892-1940

3.      conforming to an ideal standard

None of us have yet seen an ideally perfect man, and yet without that ideal we cannot progress.

Swami Vivekananda, 1863-1902

4.      thorough; utter

Tomorrow, smile at a perfect stranger and mean it.

John O’Callaghan, 1988-

5.      of an extreme degree

Everything I saw was in such perfect harmony with the landscape, and the people fitted in so well with their surroundings and lived a life in such perfect accord with their needs and beliefs – that the whole structure formed a solid entity with never a crack, and at times I began to wonder whether any other way of life really existed.

from ‘Mustang; A Lost Tibetan Kingdom’ by Michel Peissel, 1937-2011

6.      proficient; expert

Practice makes perfect.

Traditional Proverb

7.      absolute

Good posture can be successfully acquired only when the entire mechanism of the body is under perfect control.

Joseph Pilates, 1883-1967

8.      in music, applied to intervals of an octave (8 notes apart), a fourth, or a fifth

When any note is played, the interval one perfect fifth higher is audible in the sound of that note.

noun

1.      in grammar, a tense used to indicate a completed action

What is realized in my history is not the past definite of what was, since it is no more, or even the present perfect of what has been in what I am, but the future anterior of what I shall have been for what I am in the process of becoming.

Jacques Lacan, 1901-1981

verb

1.      to finish; to complete

I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give to others…I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.

Thomas Edison, 1847-1931

2.      to make flawless

The art of giving is perfected through anonymity.

Douglas Horton, 1891-1968

3.      to improve

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

Chinese Proverb