Defective vs Malfunction - What's the difference?
defective | malfunction |
Having one or more defects.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-03
, author=
, title=The Smallest Cell
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lacking some forms; e.g., having only one tense or being usable only in the third person.
A person considered to be defective.
* {{quote-news, year=2007, date=January 15, author=Bernard E. Harcourt, title=The Mentally Ill, Behind Bars, work=New York Times
, passage=There were many more kinds of mental institutions at mid-century, ones for “mental defectives and epileptics” and the mentally retarded, psychiatric wards in veterans hospitals, as well as “psychopathic” and private mental hospitals. }}
to function improperly
to fail to function
As nouns the difference between defective and malfunction
is that defective is a person considered to be defective while malfunction is faulty functioning.As an adjective defective
is having one or more defects.As a verb malfunction is
to function improperly.defective
English
Adjective
(en adjective)citation, passage=It is likely that the long evolutionary trajectory of Mycoplasma went from a reductive autotroph to oxidative heterotroph to a cell-wall–defective degenerate parasite. This evolutionary trajectory assumes the simplicity to complexity route of biogenesis, a point of view that is not universally accepted.}}
Usage notes
* Nouns to which "defective" is often applied: merchandise, goods, part, component, product, equipment, gene, unit, construction, design, drug, memory, wiring, machine, device, instrument, hardware, software, vehicle.Synonyms
* faultyNoun
(en noun)citation
See also
*malfunction
English
Verb
(en verb)- She told him the machine was poorly built, but they both knew that she was the one who had malfunctioned .