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defeat

[dih-feet]

verb (used with object)

to overcome in a contest, election, battle, etc.; prevail over; vanquish: They defeated the enemy. She defeated her brother at tennis.

to frustrate; thwart.

to eliminate or deprive of something expected: The early returns defeated his hopes of election.

Law. to annul.

noun

the act of overcoming in a contest: an overwhelming defeat of all opposition.

an instance of defeat; setback: He considered his defeat a personal affront.

an overthrow or overturning; vanquishment: the defeat of a government.

a bringing to naught; frustration: the defeat of all his hopes and dreams.

the act or event of being bested; losing: Defeat is not something she abides easily.

EXPAND

10.

Archaic. undoing; destruction; ruin.

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Defeat is always a great word to know.

So is injunction. Does it mean:

a formal accusation initiating a criminal case, presented by a grand jury and usually required for felonies and other serious crimes

a judicial process or order requiring the person or persons to whom it is directed to do a particular act or to refrain from doing a particular act

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Origin:
1325–75; Middle English defeten (v.) < Anglo-French, Old French desfait, past participle of desfaire to undo, destroy < Medieval Latin disfacere, equivalent to Latin dis- dis-¹ + facere to do

Related forms

de·feat·er, noun

non·de·feat, noun

pre·de·feat, noun, verb

qua·si-de·feat·ed, adjective

re·de·feat, verb, noun

EXPAND

un·de·feat·ed, adjective

un·de·feat·ed·ly, adverb

un·de·feat·ed·ness, noun

COLLAPSE

Synonyms
1. overwhelm, overthrow, rout, check. Defeat, conquer, overcome, subdue imply gaining a victory or control over an opponent. Defeat suggests beating or frustrating: to defeat an enemy in battle. Conquer implies finally gaining control over, usually after a series of efforts or against systematic resistance: to conquer a country, one's inclinations. Overcome emphasizes surmounting difficulties in prevailing over an antagonist: to overcome opposition, bad habits. Subdue means to conquer so completely that resistance is broken: to subdue a rebellious spirit. 2. foil, baffle, balk. 7. downfall.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Link To defeat

Example Sentences

One defeat cannot wipe out all those trophies, all that progress, all those winners under snowballing pressure.

To defeat an enemy, know its lifestyle, where it works and its secret hiding places.

His referendum defeat makes the first course hard: it would risk a split in the armed forces and serious violence.

EXPAND

One defeat cannot wipe out all those trophies, all that progress, all those winners under snowballing pressure.

To defeat an enemy, know its lifestyle, where it works and its secret hiding places.

His referendum defeat makes the first course hard: it would risk a split in the armed forces and serious violence.

But tango sometimes hits a sweeter note, with tunes that uplift and lyrics of celebration rather than defeat.

Anecdotes, however interesting, don't defeat statistics.

Earlier in history, one famous player was so nonplussed after a defeat that he tried to shove his opponent out the window.

They are maddeningly difficult to detect and defeat.

It was the first major electoral defeat in the nine years of his presidency.

Caricaturing your enemy as a psychopath simply ensures that you will never defeat him.

But the scale of its defeat stunned even party diehards.

If it were not the case that underdogs can sometimes defeat the predicted winners, soccer would be uninteresting.

Silencing certain immune cells could defeat disease.

The military has tried using robots to defeat insurgent bombs for years, without much luck.

Many pro-education senators, representatives, and governors are expected to go down in defeat.

Moreover, the defeat is a calamity for several poor countries, some virtually in thrall to drug barons.

Somewhere in the forest interior an old concrete gun emplacement sagged in defeat.

Leaving a breeding pair of the same order would defeat the entire program.

The virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome appears to mutate as it spreads, making it especially difficult to defeat.

Supporters of the measure, however, refused to concede defeat.

Modern humans' complex use of language sounded the defeat of their big-browed cousins, a new study says.

Our bodies defeat infections in part because our immune system's genes are many and diverse.

Tuberculosis is hard to defeat in part because it produces a molecule that can destroy many antibiotics.

There is a simpler and better way to defeat the orphan-work problem.

Men paint themselves their national colors and cry openly at defeat.

Once you beat them, you will never defeat them the same way again.

Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat.

He never revealed the encryption code or the program he used to defeat it.

Of course, that may defeat the purpose of closing the biz one day a week.

And one of history's great medical advances-the defeat of smallpox.

It's claimed to make it easy to defeat padlocks and filing cabinets, with.

It creates several new procedures to deter or defeat bad patents.

Nature, malice, and human fallibility can all defeat any design of man.

After waiting all day at the airport in the vain hope of finding another flight or a standby seat, he returned home in defeat.

Even defeat sounds more attractive when it is fair and square.

Regardless of how you test online, students are smart and will defeat the system, and freely share the answers with others.

Brightmail's operators monitor decoy e-mail accounts, looking for new examples of spam or viruses that can defeat filters.

Instead, they remind us of the hot sting of shame, failure and defeat.

Creditors have periodically imposed monetary anchors in an attempt to defeat the borrowers' lobby.

We cannot let the enemy know how we're working to defeat him.

Some will see it as a defeat for free trade: others as a victory for intellectual-property rights.

But they were pretty good at figuring out how to defeat the bosses.

Mere verbal violence can backfire by making our opponents stronger and better able to defeat us.

Of course this would defeat the whole purpose of this design.

Now the battle for the desktop could snatch defeat from the jaws of moral victory.

They also come out with new editions every four years to defeat the used book market.

Please do not take my position as one of self-pity or admmitting of defeat.

From the perspective of human ethics based on evolution no one can say anything is evil that has the might to defeat the rest.

During a battle, the ability to move troops swiftly and without detection can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

They prefer to treat it as creationism, because creationism is easy to defeat.

His money defeated justice but it need not defeat our sense of humor.

No simple manual can-opener is going to defeat his son.

But every one of them is made up of several blocks, and as you defeat them the blocks stay in the box.

The company even spun its defeat as a reinforcement of its beliefs:.

If he withdraws from the war, it will be a military defeat.

The short history of the computer industry is dominated by two well-known stories of business triumph and defeat.

But that's a smaller margin of defeat than a similar effort last month.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

defeat (dɪˈfiːt)

—vb
1.	to overcome in a contest or competition; win a victory over
2.	to thwart or frustrate: this accident has defeated all his hopes of winning
3.	law to render null and void; annul

—n
4.	the act of defeating or state of being defeated
5.	an instance of defeat
6.	overthrow or destruction
7.	law an annulment

[C14: from Old French desfait, from desfaire to undo, ruin, from des-dis-¹ + faire to do, from Latin facere]

de'feater

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

defeat

late 14c., from Anglo-Norm. defeter, from O.Fr. defait, pp. of defaire, from V.L. *diffacere "undo, destroy," from L. dis- "un-, not" + facere "to do, perform" (see factitious). Original sense was of "bring ruination, cause destruction." Military sense of "conquer" is c.1600.

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