progressive, progressive tense, imperfect, imperfect tense, continuous tense (adj)

a tense of verbs used in describing action that is on-going

imperfect (adj)

not perfect; defective or inadequate

"had only an imperfect understanding of his responsibilities"; "imperfect mortals"; "drainage here is imperfect"

fallible, frail, imperfect, weak (adj)

wanting in moral strength, courage, or will; having the attributes of man as opposed to e.g. divine beings

"I'm only a fallible human"; "frail humanity"

imperfect (Noun)

Something having a minor flaw

imperfect (Noun)

A tense of verbs used in describing a past action that is incomplete or continuous.

imperfect (Adjective)

Not perfect

imperfect (Adjective)

unisexual: having either male (with stamens) or female (with pistil) flowers, but not with both.

Imperfect

The imperfect is a verb form, found in various languages, which combines past tense and imperfective aspect. It can therefore have meanings similar to the English "was walking" or "used to walk". It contrasts with preterite forms, which refer to a single completed event in the past. Traditionally, the imperfect of languages such as Latin and French is referred to as one of the tenses, although in fact it encodes aspectual information in addition to tense. It may be more precisely called past imperfective. When used in relation to English, "imperfect" usually refers to forms like was doing or were doing, but these are more commonly called past progressive or past continuous. The term can take on specific conventional meanings in the grammars of particular languages. In German, Imperfekt was used to refer to the simply conjugated past tense, but the term Präteritum is now preferred, since the form does not carry any implication of imperfective aspect.