defect

1. 1.

   desert (a cause, a country or an army), often in order to join the opposing cause, country, or army

   “If soldiers deserted Hitler's army, they were shot”

   Synonymsdesert

   Broaderflee

   Narrowerrat

Other forms of defect

plural

defects·

past tense

defected·

present participle

defecting·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about defect

What does defect mean?

defect means "an imperfection in a bodily system". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in defect?

defect has 2 syllables: de-fect. The stress falls on "de". In IPA it is /ˈdifɛkt/.

What is another word for defect?

Close synonyms include shortcoming, fault, flaw, blemish, mar. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is defect a common word?

defect is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.