perfectability

English

Etymology

From perfect +‎ -ability.

Noun

perfectability (uncountable)

1. The state or quality of being able to be perfected.
   • 1914, Jerome K. Jerome, chapter V, in Three Men on the Bummel‎:

     He had noticed in his circle many an otherwise promising union result in disappointment and dismay, purely in consequence of the false estimate formed by bride or bridegroom concerning the imagined perfectability of the other.

   • 1920, Sax Rohmer, chapter III, in The Golden Scorpion‎:

     The man who has learned the Fifth Secret of Rache Churan—who has learned how to control his will—holds a power absolute and beyond perfectability.

   • 1921, Allen Johnson, A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty‎, Yale University Press, page 19:

     In him as in his two intimates, Gallatin and Madison, there was a touch of that philosophy which colored the thought of reformers on the eve of the French Revolution, a naive confidence in the perfectability of man and the essential worthiness of his aspirations.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:perfectability.

Derived terms

• imperfectability