perfectionate

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French perfectionner (with common translation of French -er to English -ate; as in assassinate). Equivalent to perfection +‎ -ate (verb-forming suffix).

Verb

perfectionate (third-person singular simple present perfectionates, present participle perfectionating, simple past and past participle perfectionated)

(transitive, now rare) To make perfect or complete; to perfect. [from 16th c.]
- 1695, John Dryden, Parallel of Poetry and Painting:
  [P]ainters and sculptors, cjoosing the most elegant natural beauties, perfectionate the idea, and advance their art above Nature itself in her individual productions; which is the utmost mastery of human performance.
- 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC:
  ‘I agree with you,’ replied the stranger; ‘we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves—such a friend ought to be—do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures.’
- 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 23, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
  If interrupted, he remonstrated pathetically with his little maid. Every great artist, he said, had need of solitude to perfectionate his works.