Something defective was made wrong and does not do its job. The new kettle that trips the fuse, the batch of airbags the factory calls back, the lock that turns and turns and never catches.
It points at a fault built in from the start rather than at wear, so a ten-year-old bike with a stretched chain is worn out, and a new one with a cracked frame is defective. The fault itself is a defect, and the shop language around it is fixed: a defective part, a defective unit, defective goods. Keep it away from the verb defect, which is another animal altogether, since to defect is to abandon your side or your country. Never use defective of a person either; it is a word for manufactured things, and aimed at people it is an insult with an ugly history behind it. Grammar borrows it too, where a defective verb such as must is one that lacks forms the others have.
1adjectivedefectiveHaving a fault from the way it was made, so that it does not work properly.
“The recall covers every car with a defective fuel pump.”
2adjectivegrammarIn grammar, lacking some of the forms that other words of its class have.
“Beware is a defective verb, since there is no bewared and no bewaring.”
Defective arrived almost untouched. Latin defectivus passed into Old French as defectif, Middle English took it as defectif, and English wobbled between defectif and defective before settling on the longer spelling. Three languages handled it and none of them bent it out of shape.
Latin
dēfectīvus
Old French
defectif
Middle English
defectif
English, today
defective
From Middle English defectif, defective, from Old French defectif, from Latin dēfectīvus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Man Called Ove, Repair & Damage
First appears in chapter 14 of A Man Called Ove.
Practise this word