1667,John Milton, “Book VIII”, inParadise Lost.[…], London:[…] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker[…];[a]nd by Robert Boulter[…];[a]nd Matthias Walker,[…],→OCLC; republished asParadise Lost in Ten Books:[…], London: Basil Montagu Pickering[…],1873,→OCLC:
Nothingimperfet or deficient left Of all that he Created.
(obsolete) Lacking some elementary organ that is essential to successful or normal activity.
1653,Jeremy Taylor, “Twenty-five Sermons Preached at Golden Grove; Being for the Winter Half-year,[…]: Sermon III.[Doomsday Book; or, Christ’s Advent to Judgment.] Part III.”, inReginald Heber, editor,The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, D.D.[…], volume V, London: Ogle, Duncan, and Co.[…]; and Richard Priestley,[…], published1822,→OCLC,page35:
When the prophetJoel was describing the formidable accidents in the day of the Lord's judgment, and the fearful sentence of an angry Judge, he was not able to express it, but stammered like a child, or an amazed,imperfect person.
1651,John Donne, Letter toHenry Goodere, inLetters to Severall Persons of Honour, edited by Charles Edmund Merrill, Jr., New York: Sturgis & Walton, 1910,[1]
I write to you from theSpring Garden, whither I withdrew my self to think of this; and the intensenesse of my thinking ends in this, that by my help Gods work should beimperfected, if by any means I resisted the amasement.
Time, which perfects some things,imperfects also others.
1962, Alec Harman,Wilfrid Mellers,Man and His Music: The Story of Musical Experience in the West[3], Oxford University Press, Part I, Chapter 5, p. 126:
[…] such was their desire for greater rhythmic freedom that composers began to use red notes as well.[…] Their value was[…] restricted at first, for redness implies theimperfecting of a note which is perfect if black[…]
