fehlerhaften

The form fehlerhaften is the declined plural attributive form of the German adjective fehlerhaft, meaning "faulty" or "defective." It is used to describe objects, data, processes, or statements that contain errors or defects.

When used with a definite article or other determiner, fehlerhaften appears in the plural: die fehlerhaften Belege, die fehlerhaften Daten; in the dative plural: den fehlerhaften Belegen. In the absence of a determiner, the strong declension yields fehlerhafte for plural nouns, as in fehlerhafte Daten.

Fields frequently using the term include data quality, manufacturing, software testing, and scientific or legal documentation.

Examples: Die fehlerhaften Messdaten wurden verworfen. Die fehlerhaften Komponenten mussten ersetzt werden.

From a linguistic perspective, fehlerhaft is composed of Fehler (error) and haft (a suffix meaning "bearing" or "characterized by"); the word thus literally means "bearing errors." Related terms include fehlerfrei (error-free), mangelhaft (defective), defekt, and fehlerbehaftet (laden with errors).