perfectness
(ˈpɜːfɪktnɪs)
Forms: see perfect a.
[f. as prec. + -ness.]
The quality or condition of being perfect (in the various senses of the adj.); perfection. (In early use chiefly in the religious sense of a perfect life.)
| a 1340 Hampole Psalter Prol. (1884) 3 Þe sange of psalmes..does away synne, it quemes god, it enformes perfytnes. 1377 Langl. P. Pl. B. x. 200 Poule preched þe peple þat parfitnesse loued. c 1400 Lanfranc's Cirurg. 90 Boile alle þese to þe perfiȝtnesse of a sirup. c 1430 Lydg. Min. Poems (Percy Soc.) 59 Pristhode liuethe in perfitenesse, And can in lytel haue suffisaunce. 1464 Rolls of Parlt. V. 562/1 That every of the seid Clothes..be.. sealed..in witnes and record of the forseid true lengh, brede and parfitnes. 1526 Tindale Col. iii. 14 Above all these thynges put on love, which is the bonde off parfectnes. [So later Eng. vv.; Wyclif and Rhem. perfection.] a 1529 Skelton Col. Cloute 978 Theyr chambres thus to dresse With suche parfetnesse And all suche holynesse. 1535 Coverdale Job ii. 9 Dost thou yet contynue in thy perfectnesse? curse God, & dye. 1588 Shakes. L.L.L. v. ii. 173 Pag. Once to behold with your Sunne beamed eyes, With your Sunne beamed eyes... Bero. Is this your perfectnesse? be gon you rogue. 1607 Markham Caval. iv. (1617) 29 There is nothing..which brings a horse either to perfitnesse or imperfitnesse, but onely practise. 1795 Coleridge Plot Discovered 33 That Constitution, from whose present perfectness they derive their only possible justification. 1838–9 Hallam Hist. Lit. ii. v. §82 In this varied delineation of female perfectness, no earlier poet had equalled him [Spenser]. 1871 Palgrave Lyr. Poems 72 Home of the peace earth cannot give In her most perfect perfectness! [Mod. Sc. Maxim, Practice maks perfyteness.] |