The phrase "a defect of character" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a flaw or weakness in someone's moral or ethical qualities.
Example: "He acknowledged that his tendency to lie was a defect of character that he needed to work on."
Alternatives: "a flaw in character" or "a moral failing".
Horrific crimes deserve stern justice, but don't we want to be careful about criminalizing a defect of character?
His pitilessness is also made much of – as if it were a branch of truthfulness rather than a defect of character.
In suggesting that alcoholism was a chemical condition marked by irresistible craving, he anticipated the transformation of our understanding of addiction from a defect of character into a disease, and recognized the reason that it would remain, at best, an uneasy hybrid of the moral and the medical.
For that view implies, in Adams's words, that "the creator's choice of an inferior world must manifest a defect of character".
And his response to this objection is that "God's choice of a less excellent world could be accounted for in terms of His grace, which is considered a virtue rather than a defect of character in Judeo-Christian ethics" (Adams, 1972, 318-319).
The word means "a defect of character". But then she stumbled over "resipiscence," meaning a change of mind or heart.
The explanation is mechanistic rather than personal and the posited explanatory bias is not a defect of epistemic character or conduct.
A clear and unambiguous political extremism is reimagined as a mere defect of character.
An inventory of sorts -- but in essence a list of my fears, my defects of character, and my thoughts and actions over the years that hurt myself and others.
Bill's ideas about recovery included a personal inventory of one's defects of character, restitution to those harmed and perhaps most important, one alcoholic had to speak with another alcoholic to pass on the message of hope and healing in order for it to work.
