perfectibility
Americannoun
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the quality or state of being able to be made perfect or free of defects.
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the quality or state of being able to be improved.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Johnson’s faith in human perfectibility, he told me, inspired him to work to regain his strength.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 5, 2024
The title of the book comes from a quote by John Locke — “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins” — and Weissmann’s suggested solutions reflect his own faith in the perfectibility of institutions.
From New York Times • Sep. 21, 2020
Some see this as a triumph, progress towards the elimination of error and perfectibility.
From The Guardian • May 7, 2020
Wealthy and well-educated colonists embraced the ideas of the European Enlightenment, which honored science and reason and stressed the perfectibility of human nature.
From Textbooks • Jan. 18, 2018
Embedded in the history of the gene is “the quest for eternal youth, the Faustian myth of abrupt reversal of fortune, and our own century’s flirtation with the perfectibility of man.”
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
