protect against attack
1 ~ (sb / yourself / sth) (from / against sb/sth) to protect sb/sth from attack:
[VN] All our officers are trained to defend themselves against knife attacks. * Troops have been sent to defend the borders. * The male ape defends his females from other males. * [V] It is impossible to defend against an all-out attack.
support
2 [VN] ~ sb / yourself / sth (from / against sb/sth) to say or write sth in support of sb/sth that has been criticized:
Politicians are skilled at defending themselves against their critics. * How can you defend such behaviour? * He defended his decision to punish the boy.
in sport
3 [V, VN] (in football, hockey, etc.) to protect your own goal to stop your opponents from scoring
in competitions
4 [VN] to take part in a competition that you won the last time and try to win it again:
He is defending champion. * She will be defending her title at next month's championships. * (politics) He intends to defend his seat in the next election.
law
5 to act as a lawyer for sb who has been charged with a crime:
[VN] He has employed one of the UK's top lawyers to defend him. * Smith has announced that she will defend herself in the case. [also V]
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for defend is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is defend a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, defend is tagged as verb.
Does defend appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — defend appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
