noun (plural enemies)
1 [C] a person who hates sb or who acts or speaks against sb/sth:
He has a lot of enemies in the company. * After just one day, she had already made an enemy of her manager. * They used to be friends but they are now sworn enemies (= are determined not to become friends again). * It is rare to find a prominent politician with few political enemies. * The state has a duty to protect its citizens against external enemies. * Birds are the natural enemies of many insect pests (= they kill them).
seealsoENMITY
2 (the enemy) [sing.+sing./pl.v.] a country that you are fighting a war against; the soldiers, etc. of this country:
The enemy was / were forced to retreat. * enemy forces / aircraft / territory * behind enemy lines (= the area controlled by the enemy)
3 [C] ~ (of sth) (formal) anything that harms sth or prevents it from being successful:
Poverty and ignorance are the enemies of progress.
IDIOMS see WORSTadj.
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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 enemy is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does enemy appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — enemy 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.
