to perfect
123
3.9
- verb
- /pərˈfɛkt/
- And like, it might take a restaurant years to perfect just their rice.
- perfect skills
- perfect the technique
- perfect a method
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Watch on YouTubeIt's just a vision of life perfected that is essentially a monk.
- It's just a vision of life perfected that is essentially a monk.
- I'm not perfect and neither are you, but we are perfecting ourselves.
- He had spent his whole life perfecting Tolstoy.
- And then they go on to sort of perfect that skill, right?
- He actually says perfection, pleasure perfects the activity.
- English inventor John Kemp Starley perfect the velociped.
Examples
-
That's why we're rushing to perfect a projector and a camera to go with it.
Fiction book (1993) -
In order to perfect her skills, she practices the piano for hours each day.
-
Took me a while to perfect this little trick.
-
We have come a long way toward perfecting our union.
-
"We cannot improve the making of our eyes, but we can endlessly perfect the camera."
Academic text (1999) -
I spent the last two weeks perfecting my egg peeling technique.
-
He perfected the von Wolfhausen beer recipe.
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A new radiocarbon dating technique was perfected this year that will allow scientists to date artifacts without harming them.
Academic text (2011) -
The artist worked all night to perfect her painting before the exhibition.
-
Engineers are determined to perfect the design of the new electric car.
Synonyms
74
4.2
To make a skill better by careful practice
14
7.4
To make something complete or perfect
5
3.6
To add small final touches to make something complete
Antonyms
Idioms
Trying to be perfect can stop good work from getting done
Compounds
- Informal
29
6.0
A situation in which several bad things happen at the same time and make things much worse
- Specialized
14
6.1
A baseball game where the pitcher allows no player from the other team to reach base
3
2.7
A photo taken at the best moment that shows the main thing in the picture clearly
- Specialized
1
3.0
A verb tense that shows an action happened before another past action or time
- Specialized
1
4.2
A verb form that shows an action finished before now or another event
- Specialized
1
5.5
A verb form showing an action will be finished before a future time
- Specialized
1
3.9
A verb form for an action that finished before another past action
- Literature
1
4.8
The vowel sound and the sound after it at the ends of lines match exactly
- Specialized
1
3.4
A verb tense used to talk about actions that happened before now and still matter
- Specialized
1
7.4
A verb form that uses having plus the past form to show an action finished before another
- Specialized
1
4.7
A verb tense using has or have been plus -ing for actions started in the past and still continuing
- Specialized
1
5.3
A verb form using has/have been plus -ing to show an action that started in the past and continues now
- Specialized
1
5.1
A verb form that shows an action will finish before a future time
- Specialized
1
6.5
An imagined gas whose particles have no size and do not attract each other, used in physics
How Perfect
Surface Forms
Etymology
Perfect as a verb comes from Latin per- 'completely' and facere 'to make', so it literally means 'to make completely'. That's why to perfect something is to improve it until it is as complete or as good as possible.