Other forms: perfected, perfecting
Perfect means nothing about it needs changing. A perfect score, a perfect fit, a perfect day at the beach where even the weather behaved.
The adjective and the verb are the same letters said differently: PER-fect is the adjective, per-FECT the verb, and you perfect a recipe by making it as good as it can be. Perfect FOR is the everyday pattern — this coat is perfect for winter — and 'Perfect.' said on its own means 'that works, go ahead.' It also intensifies: a perfect stranger is a complete stranger, perfect nonsense is total nonsense. Grammar borrowed it for the perfect tenses (I have eaten, she had left). One rule worth keeping: perfect is absolute, so 'very perfect' and 'more perfect' sound wrong — say almost perfect or nearly perfect instead.
1adjectiveperfectSo good that nothing about it could be improved.~67%
“It was a perfect performance from the first note to the last.”
synonyms: flawless, faultless
2adjectiveexactlyExactly right for a particular purpose or person.~19%
“This bag is perfect for weekend trips.”
3adjectivecompleteComplete; total. Used before a noun for emphasis.~10%
“He is a perfect stranger to me.”
4verbpossiblyTo make something as good as it can possibly be.~2%
“She spent two years perfecting her accent.”
5adjectivegrammarIn grammar, naming the tenses formed with 'have'.~2%
“'I have finished' is in the present perfect.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense (4 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: flawless
Latin perficere meant 'to finish' — per-, 'through', plus facere, 'to make': made all the way through. Old French wore it down to parfit, and Middle English took it as perfit. In the fifteenth century the spelling was patched back towards its Latin ancestor to give perfect, while the French word went on to become parfait — so the dessert in the tall glass and the perfect score are the same word twice.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰeh₁-
Latin
perfectus
Old French
parfit
Middle English
perfit
English, today
perfect
Built from
From Middle English perfit, from Old French parfit (modern: parfait), from Latin perfectus, perfect passive participle of perficere (“to finish”), from per- (“through, thorough”) + facere (“to do, to make”). The spelling was modified in the 15th century to conform to its Latin etymon. a doublet of parfait and perfecto and perfectus. Displaced native fulfremed.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA