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
With its myth of endless progress, America has always embraced obsolescence and presumed the perfectibility of the future.
From New York Times • Nov. 19, 2018
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
“In American history, women have been perceived to reach their height of moral perfectibility when they’re pregnant and mothering,” Cramer said.
From Washington Post • Jul. 13, 2016
Encoded in that molecule were the loci of human perfectibility and vulnerability: once we learned to manipulate this chemical, we would rewrite our nature.
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.
