The metamaterial absorber has the advantages of thin thickness, small size, simple structure and high absorption. As is different from the traditional metamaterial absorber, the adjustable material is used for designing the structure, which can realize the dynamic modulation of the device by changing the external factors without changing the device structure. In this paper, an adjustable terahertz absorber with multi-defect combination embedded VO₂ thin film is proposed. It is composed of three layers: the upper metal pattern layer, the substrate and the bottom metal plate. Vanadium dioxide medium is sandwiched between the upper surface and the substrate. The absorption performance of the absorber composed of different defect combinations is studied, and the electric field distribution of each combination is analyzed. At the same time, the influences of defects on the absorption performance of the absorber are compared with each other and analyzed. After comprehensive analysis, the defects are combined into the final proposed structure, and the electric field distribution and surface current distribution are analyzed. The relevant parameters affecting the performance of the absorber are scanned and analyzed, and the final optimized structural parameters are obtained. The results show that the absorption rate at f = 4.08 THz and f = 4.33 THz are 99.8% and 99.9%, respectively. The phase transition of vanadium dioxide can be controlled by changing ambient temperature, so that the absorption rates of two frequency points can be changed from 99.8% to 1.0%. In addition, the surface normalized impedance of the proposed absorber is analyzed, which shows that the normalized surface impedance of the designed absorber matches the impedance of the free space well. By changing the incident angle and polarization of terahertz wave, the results show that the absorption rate of the absorber under TE and TM polarization wave both can be more than 98% with the incident angle ranging from 0° to 40°. The proposed terahertz wave absorber has the characteristics of high absorption, dynamic tuning and insensitive polarization. It has good application prospects in terahertz wave related fields such as detectors and stealth technology.