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perfectibility

American  
[per-fekt-uh-bil-i-tee] / pərˌfɛkt əˈbɪl ɪ ti /

noun

  1. the quality or state of being able to be made perfect or free of defects.

  2. 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

Some see this as a triumph, progress towards the elimination of error and perfectibility.

From The Guardian • May 7, 2020

It is also a story, though, that hews to a troubling belief in human perfectibility: a national makeover mentality about identity.

From New York Times • Jun. 22, 2018

The communitarian movement was an unusual but emblematic example of the era’s faith in the power of love and reason to remake society around the principle of human perfectibility.

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