Perfect

How to spell perfect

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce perfect

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does perfect mean?

1. adjectiveHaving all the required qualities, free from fault or flaw; as good as it can be.
2. verbTo make something completely free from faults; to refine until it is as good as it can be.

Perfect in a sentence

• adjective

  The weather was perfect for the long drive to the coast.

• verb

  The chef spent years trying to perfect her signature sauce.

• adjective

  After weeks of practice her presentation was almost perfect.

• verb

  Engineers worked overtime to perfect the new braking system.

Where does perfect come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Perfect descends from the Latin perfectus, the past participle of perficere, a verb meaning 'to complete' or 'to bring fully to an end'. That verb was built from per-, meaning 'thoroughly' or 'completely', and facere, meaning 'to make' or 'to do', so the literal idea was something made all the way through, finished with nothing left undone. English took the word in during the 1300s by way of Old French, where it was spelled parfit, and for a time the English form was 'parfit' too, as readers of Chaucer will recognise in his 'parfit gentil knight'. Scholars later remodelled the spelling to look more like the Latin original, which is why we now write the c and the t even though everyday speech often softens them. The same facere root that supplies the 'fect' here also surfaces in 'manufacture', 'defect' and 'affect', and remembering that 'fect' means 'made' helps fix the spelling.

How the word is built

• per- (thoroughly, completely)
• fect (from facere: to make/do)