flawless
Perfect, with no mistakes or faults.
- Priya's flawless dive earned a perfect ten from every judge.
- The jeweller held up a flawless diamond that sparkled in the light.
Similar: perfect, faultless, spotless
flawless or immaculate?
Flawless means no mistakes or faults. Immaculate means perfectly clean and tidy.
Both words describe something with nothing wrong with it, so children use them as if they were the same. They are praising different kinds of perfect.
Flawless is about mistakes and faults. A gymnast who lands every move without a wobble gives a flawless routine. A spelling test with every word right is flawless too, even if the handwriting is messy.
Immaculate is about being spotless. A school uniform on the first day of term, freshly ironed with not a crumb on it, is immaculate. So is a bedroom after a very determined tidy-up before visitors arrive. Writers sometimes stretch immaculate to mean perfect in general, but its home is clean and tidy.
Both words, side by side
immaculate
Perfectly clean and tidy.
- His immaculate uniform had not a single crease or speck of dirt.
- After hours of scrubbing, the kitchen was immaculate, without a single crumb anywhere.
Similar: spotless, clean, tidy
Why it costs marks
In closest-meaning and odd-one-out questions, immaculate tends to sit with spotless and pristine, while flawless sits with faultless and perfect. Knowing which family each word belongs to makes those choices far less of a guess.
Definitions and example sentences on this page are the ones a child sees inside Wordrealm, taken from our list of over 1,100 words. It is free to browse, with nothing to sign up for.
Sitting the 11+ in Kent, Medway or Buckinghamshire?
Plain-English guides to each test, from the councils’ own pages: Kent Test · Medway Test · Bucks Secondary Transfer Test