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or moral excellence; the highest attainable state or degree of excellence; maturity; as, perfection in an art, in a science, or in a system; perfection in form or degree; fruits in perfection.

Of or pertaining to perfection; characterized by perfection. [R.] Bp. Pearson.

To perfect. Dryden.

The doctrine of the Perfectionists.

One pretending to perfection; esp., one pretending to moral perfection; one who believes that persons may and do attain to moral perfection and sinlessness in this life. South.

The act of bringing to perfection, or the state of having attained to perfection. [R.] I. Taylor.

The quality or condition of being imperfect; want of perfection; incompleteness; deficiency; fault or blemish. Sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head. Shak.

Want of perfection; imperfection. [Obs.] Wyclif.

Complete in itself; perfect; consummate; faultless; as, absolute perfection; absolute beauty. So absolute she seems, And in herself complete. Milton.

ment; a brief. An abstract of every treatise he had read. Watts. Man, the abstract Of all perfection, which the workmanship Of Heaven hath modeled. Ford.

To come near to; to approach. The telescope approximates perfection. J. Morse.

ce which treats of the practice of the theological and moral virtues, and the counsels of perfection. Am. Cyc.

f being compassed or accomplished by efforts directed to the object. The highest pitch of perfection attainable in this life. Addison.

To wait; to stay; to delay. [Obs.] For this perfection she must yet attend, Till to her Maker she espoused be. Sir J. Davies.

out blemish. Lev. xiv. 10. The reliefs of an envious man are those little blemishes and imperfections that discover themselves in an illustrious character. Spectator.

A state or time of beauty, freshness, and vigor; an opening to higher perfection, analogous to that of buds into blossoms; as, the bloom of youth. Every successive mother has transmitted a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty. Hawthorne.

To cause imperfection of vision in; to dim; to darken. Her eyes are blurred with the lightning's glare. J. R. Drake.

To refer to or specify, as for support, proof, illustration, or confirmation. The imperfections which you have cited. Shak.

process by which anything becomes of the color of a lemon; esp., in alchemy, the state of perfection in the philosopher's stone indicated by its assuming a deep yellow color. Thynne.

An imperfection caused by such insufficient welding.