Defender

noun

noun ·3 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Someone who defends people or property.
  2. 2
    a person who cares for persons or property wordnet
  3. 3
    One of the players whose primary task is to prevent the opposition from scoring.
  4. 4
    a fighter who holds out against attack wordnet
  5. 5
    A fighter who seeks to repel an attack.
Show 2 more definitions
  1. 6
    A lawyer who represents defendants, especially a public defender; a defense attorney (US) or defence counsel (UK). rare

    "There was another protection to which she was intitled by that law, namely, a defender; but she had none."

  2. 7
    A defendant in a civil action.

Synonyms

All synonyms
protectorabettoradmireradvocateaficionadoangel

Example

More examples

"The defender talked about his impressions after the match."

Etymology

From Middle English defender, deffender, defendere, defendour, defendoure, partly from Anglo-Norman defendour, from Old French defendëor; partly from Middle English defenden + -ere, equivalent to defend + -er.

Related phrases

ear defenderkey defenderdefence counseldefense attorneypublic defender

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.