1 protecting sb/sth against attack:
a defensive measure * Troops are taking up a defensive position around the town.
compareOFFENSIVE
2 behaving in a way that shows that you feel that people are criticizing you:
Don't ask him about his plans-he just gets defensive.
3 (sport) connected with trying to prevent the other team or player from scoring points or goals:
defensive play
compareOFFENSIVE
defensively adverb
defensiveness noun [U]
Part of speech: noun
IDIOMS
on / onto the defensive acting in a way that shows that you expect to be attacked or criticized; having to defend yourself:
Their questions about the money put her on the defensive. * Warnings of an enemy attack forced the troops onto the defensive.
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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.
Where does this definition of defensive come from?
This entry for defensive is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is defensive a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, defensive is tagged as adjective.
Does defensive appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — defensive 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.
