defect
from
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)
defect
n 1: an imperfection in a bodily system; "visual defects"; "this
device permits detection of defects in the lungs"
2: a failing or deficiency; "that interpretation is an
unfortunate defect of our lack of information" [syn:
{defect}, {shortcoming}]
3: an imperfection in an object or machine; "a flaw caused the
crystal to shatter"; "if there are any defects you should
send it back to the manufacturer" [syn: {defect}, {fault},
{flaw}]
4: a mark or flaw that spoils the appearance of something
(especially on a person's body); "a facial blemish" [syn:
{blemish}, {defect}, {mar}]
v 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" [syn: {defect},
{desert}]
from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Defect \De*fect"\, n. [L. defectus, fr. deficere, defectum, to
desert, fail, be wanting; de- + facere to make, do. See
{Fact}, {Feat}, and cf. {Deficit}.]
1. Want or absence of something necessary for completeness or
perfection; deficiency; -- opposed to superfluity.
[1913 Webster]
Errors have been corrected, and defects supplied.
--Davies.
[1913 Webster]
2. Failing; fault; imperfection, whether physical or moral;
blemish; as, a defect in the ear or eye; a defect in
timber or iron; a defect of memory or judgment.
[1913 Webster]
Trust not yourself; but, your defects to know,
Make use of every friend -- and every foe. --Pope.
[1913 Webster]
Among boys little tenderness is shown to personal
defects. --Macaulay.
Syn: Deficiency; imperfection; blemish. See {Fault}.
[1913 Webster]
from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
bug
defect
snag
<programming> An unwanted and unintended property of a program
or piece of hardware, especially one that causes it to
malfunction. Antonym of {feature}. E.g. "There's a bug in
the editor: it writes things out backward." The
identification and removal of bugs in a program is called
"{debugging}".
Admiral {Grace Hopper} (an early computing pioneer better
known for inventing {COBOL}) liked to tell a story in which a
technician solved a {glitch} in the {Harvard Mark II machine}
by pulling an actual insect out from between the contacts of
one of its relays, and she subsequently promulgated {bug} in
its hackish sense as a joke about the incident (though, as she
was careful to admit, she was not there when it happened).
For many years the logbook associated with the incident and
the actual bug in question (a moth) sat in a display case at
the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC). The entire story,
with a picture of the logbook and the moth taped into it, is
recorded in the "Annals of the History of Computing", Vol. 3,
No. 3 (July 1981), pp. 285--286.
The text of the log entry (from September 9, 1947), reads
"1545 Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay. First actual case of
bug being found". This wording establishes that the term was
already in use at the time in its current specific sense - and
Hopper herself reports that the term "bug" was regularly
applied to problems in radar electronics during WWII.
Indeed, the use of "bug" to mean an industrial defect was
already established in Thomas Edison's time, and a more
specific and rather modern use can be found in an electrical
handbook from 1896 ("Hawkin's New Catechism of Electricity",
Theo. Audel & Co.) which says: "The term "bug" is used to a
limited extent to designate any fault or trouble in the
connections or working of electric apparatus." It further
notes that the term is "said to have originated in
{quadruplex} telegraphy and have been transferred to all
electric apparatus."
The latter observation may explain a common folk etymology of
the term; that it came from telephone company usage, in which
"bugs in a telephone cable" were blamed for noisy lines.
Though this derivation seems to be mistaken, it may well be a
distorted memory of a joke first current among *telegraph*
operators more than a century ago!
Actually, use of "bug" in the general sense of a disruptive
event goes back to Shakespeare! In the first edition of
Samuel Johnson's dictionary one meaning of "bug" is "A
frightful object; a walking spectre"; this is traced to
"bugbear", a Welsh term for a variety of mythological monster
which (to complete the circle) has recently been reintroduced
into the popular lexicon through fantasy {role-playing games}.
In any case, in jargon the word almost never refers to
insects. Here is a plausible conversation that never actually
happened:
"There is a bug in this ant farm!"
"What do you mean? I don't see any ants in it."
"That's the bug."
[There has been a widespread myth that the original bug was
moved to the Smithsonian, and an earlier version of this entry
so asserted. A correspondent who thought to check discovered
that the bug was not there. While investigating this in late
1990, your editor discovered that the NSWC still had the bug,
but had unsuccessfully tried to get the Smithsonian to accept
it - and that the present curator of their History of
American Technology Museum didn't know this and agreed that it
would make a worthwhile exhibit. It was moved to the
Smithsonian in mid-1991, but due to space and money
constraints has not yet been exhibited. Thus, the process of
investigating the original-computer-bug bug fixed it in an
entirely unexpected way, by making the myth true! - ESR]
[{Jargon File}]
(1999-06-29)
from
Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Revised 6th Ed (1856)
DEFECT. The want of something required by law.
2. It is a general rule that pleadings shall have these two requisites;
1. A matter sufficient in law. 2. That it be deduced and expressed according
to the forms of law. The want of either of these is a defect.
3. Defects in matters of substance cannot be cured, because it does not
appear that the plaintiff is entitled to recover; but when the defects are
in matter of form, they are cured by a verdict in favor of the party who
committed them. 3 Bouv. Inst. n. 3292; 2 Wash. 1; 1 Hen. & Munf. 153; 16
Pick. 128, 541; 1 Day, 315; 4 Conn, 190; 5 Conn. 416; 6 Conn. 176; 12 Conn.
455; 1 P. C. C. R. 76; 2 Green, 133; 4 Blackf. 107; 2 M'Lean, 35; Bac. Ab.
Verdict, X.
from
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
223 Moby Thesaurus words for "defect":
abandon, abnormality, acute disease, affection, affliction,
ailment, allergic disease, allergy, apostacize, apostatize,
arrearage, atrophy, back out, bacterial disease, betray,
birth defect, birthmark, blackhead, bleb, blemish, blight, blister,
bolt, break, break away, bug, bulla, cardiovascular disease, catch,
change sides, check, chronic disease, cicatrix,
circulatory disease, comedo, complaint, complication, condition,
congenital defect, crack, crater, craze, dearth, defacement,
defalcation, default, defection, deficiency, deficiency disease,
deficit, deformation, deformity, degenerate, degenerative disease,
depart, desert, disability, discontinuity, disease, disfiguration,
disfigurement, disorder, distemper, distortion, drawback, endemic,
endemic disease, endocrine disease, epidemic disease, error,
escape, failing, failure, fall away, fall off, fault, faute, flaw,
foible, forsake, frailty, freckle, functional disease,
fungus disease, gap, gastrointestinal disease, genetic disease, go,
go back on, go over, handicap, hemangioma, hereditary disease,
hiatus, hickey, hole, iatrogenic disease, illness, imperfection,
inadequacy, indisposition, infectious disease, infirmity,
insufficiency, interval, irregularity, keloid, kink, lack, lacuna,
leave, lentigo, let down, liability, little problem, malady,
malaise, mark, milium, miss, missing link, mistake, mole,
morbidity, morbus, muscular disease, need, needle scar,
neurological disease, nevus, nutritional disease,
occupational disease, omission, organic disease, outage,
pandemic disease, pathological condition, pathology, pimple, pit,
plant disease, pock, pockmark, port-wine mark, port-wine stain,
privation, problem, protozoan disease, psychosomatic disease,
pull out, pustule, quit, rat, reject, renegade, renege, renounce,
repudiate, respiratory disease, rift, rockiness, run out on, scab,
scantiness, scar, scarceness, scarcity, scratch, sebaceous cyst,
secede, secondary disease, seediness, sell out, shortage,
shortcoming, shortfall, sickishness, sickness, signs, snag,
something missing, split, spurn, stain, strawberry mark, sty,
switch, switch over, symptomatology, symptomology, symptoms,
syndrome, taint, tergiversate, the pip, track, turn, turn against,
turn cloak, turn traitor, twist, ullage, urogenital disease,
verruca, vesicle, vice, virus disease, vulnerable place, wale,
want, wantage, warp, wart, wasting disease, weak link, weak point,
weakness, weal, welt, wen, whitehead, withdraw, worm disease
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