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Defeat   /dɪfˈit/   Listen
noun
Defeat  n.  
1.
An undoing or annulling; destruction. (Obs.) "Upon whose property and most dear life A damned defeat was made."
2.
Frustration by rendering null and void, or by prevention of success; as, the defeat of a plan or design.
3.
An overthrow, as of an army in battle; loss of a battle; repulse suffered; discomfiture; opposed to victory.


verb
Defeat  v. t.  (past & past part. defeated; pres. part. defeating)  
1.
To undo; to disfigure; to destroy. (Obs.) "His unkindness may defeat my life."
2.
To render null and void, as a title; to frustrate, as hope; to deprive, as of an estate. "He finds himself naturally to dread a superior Being that can defeat all his designs, and disappoint all his hopes." "The escheators... defeated the right heir of his succession." "In one instance he defeated his own purpose."
3.
To overcome or vanquish, as an army; to check, disperse, or ruin by victory; to overthrow.
4.
To resist with success; as, to defeat an assault. "Sharp reasons to defeat the law."
Synonyms: To baffle; disappoint; frustrate.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Defeat" Quotes from Famous Books



... See Herod. vi. 114; the allusion is to the invasion of Greeze by Datis and Artaphernes, and to their defeat at Marathon, B.C. 490. "Heredotus estimates the number of those who fell on the Persian side at 6400 men: the number of Athenian dead is accurately known, since all were collected for the last solemn obsequies—they were 192."—Grote, "Hist. of Greece," ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... ourselves. The result of the contest could never have been doubtful, least of all to the great poet who then succeeded to the bays. His own sonnet on the subject is full of the serene consciousness of superiority, which does not even admit the idea of rivalry, far less of defeat. ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... anything for money; health, happiness, honor, life itself, are flung down on that great gaming-table, and they forget everything else in the excitement of success or the desperation of defeat. Nobody seems satisfied either, for those who win have little time or taste to enjoy their prosperity, and those who lose have little courage or patience to support them in adversity. They don't even fail as they used to. In my day ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... A sense of defeat—of being defrauded of his self-justification, and of something else beyond power of explanation to himself, beset Soames like the breath of a cold fog. Mechanically he reached up, took from the mantel-shelf a little china bowl, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... from helping to defeat these marauders, and rescue Rosemary and her brother Floyd, when the news came about the government lands being thrown open. Then had followed the alarm in the night, and the ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker


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