verb (defies, defying, defied, defied) [VN]
1 to refuse to obey or show respect for sb in authority, a law, a rule, etc:
I wouldn't have dared to defy my teachers. * Hundreds of people today defied the ban on political gatherings.
2 ~ belief, explanation, description, etc. to be impossible or almost impossible to believe, explain, describe, etc:
a political move that defies explanation * The beauty of the scene defies description.
3 to successfully resist sb/sth to a very unusual degree:
The baby boy defied all the odds and survived (= stayed alive when it seemed certain that he would die).
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WORDFAMILY
defy v.
defiance n.
defiant adj.
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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 defy is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does defy appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — defy 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.
