defectively

Updated: May 28, 2025

These eminent constitutional lawyers agreed in opinion of the importance of the provision; they differed only in thinking, the one, that the right of petition could not be too clearly defined; the other, that whether defectively defined or not in the letter, the People would take care that it should in spirit be faithfully observed.

Caleb Cushing - Speech of Mr. Cushing, of Massachusetts, on the Right of Petition,: as Connected with Petitions for the Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade: in the District of Columbia. In The House Of Representatives, January 25, 1836.

Tell me, therefore, by Jupiter! how Socrates followed up the argument; and whether he, too, as you confess was the case with yourselves, seemed disconcerted at all, or not, but calmly maintained his position; and maintained it sufficiently or defectively. Relate everything to me as accurately as you can. Phæd.

Plato - Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Socrates

"My dear fellow, may not a man employ Reason, or any other common human faculty, all his life, and yet employ them very clumsily and defectively?" "I should say so, from the gross amount of human unwisdom."

Charles Kingsley - Phaethon

For what interests us in the work of the poet is the glimpse we get of certain profound moods or inner struggles. Now, this glimpse cannot be obtained from without. Our souls are impenetrable to one another. Certain signs of passion are all that we ever apperceive externally. These we interpret though always, by the way, defectively only by analogy with what we have ourselves experienced.

Henri Bergson - Laughter : an Essay on the Meaning of the Comic

After a second or two he stretched out his hands, and the axe descended, severing the head from the body at one blow. The coherance of Charles's last speech seems to have struck Fuller, who says that, "though taken in shorthand by one eminent therein," it is done defectively. I rather think it is punctually literal.

David Masson - The Life of John Milton Volume 3 1643-1649

Nevertheless the -interrex- was entitled and bound not merely to perform all the official acts otherwise pertaining to the king, but even to nominate a king for life with the single exception, that this latter right was not vested in the first who held the office, presumably because the first was regarded as defectively appointed inasmuch as he was not nominated by his predecessor.

Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5)