Defeat
noun, verb ·Very common ·Middle school level
Definitions
- 1 The act or instance of being defeated, of being overcome or vanquished; a loss. countable, uncountable
"Licking their wounds after a temporary defeat, they planned their next move."
- 2 an unsuccessful ending to a struggle or contest wordnet
- 3 The act or instance of defeating, of overcoming, vanquishing. countable, uncountable
"The inscription records her defeat of the country's enemies in a costly war."
- 4 the feeling that accompanies an experience of being thwarted in attaining your goals wordnet
- 5 Frustration (by prevention of success), stymieing; (law) nullification. countable, uncountable
"... is subsequently issued to him, in accordance with his perfect equity thus acquired, by a legal fiction which the law creates for the protection, but not for the defeat, of his title."
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- 6 Destruction, ruin. countable, obsolete, uncountable
"and made defeat of her virginity"
- 1 To overcome in battle or contest. transitive
"Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo."
- 2 win a victory over wordnet
- 3 To reduce, to nothing, the strength of. transitive
"He finds himself naturally to dread a superior Being that can defeat all his designs, and disappoint all his hopes."
- 4 thwart the passage of wordnet
- 5 To nullify transitive
"The escheators […] defeated the right heir of his succession."
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- 6 To prevent (something) from being achieved.
"The last active L.Y.R. 0-6-0ST (apart from works shunters), No. 51408, has been moved from Bolton to Agecroft for use in New Bailey Yard, Salford, where a sharp 1 in 27 curve is said to have defeated all attempts so far to employ diesel shunters; an ex-L.Y.R. 0-4-0ST also works here."
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"The manager threw in the towel in defeat and planned how to win the next game."
Etymology
From Middle English defeten, from Middle English defet (“disfigured”, past participle) and defet (“defect”, noun), see Etymology 2 below.
From Middle English defet, from French deffet, desfait, past participle of the verb desfaire (compare modern French défaire), from des- + faire.
Related phrases
More for "defeat"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.