| Library / English Dictionary |
DEFENDING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Attempting to or designed to prevent an opponent from winning or scoring
Classified under:
Similar:
defensive (intended or appropriate for defending against or deterring aggression or attack)
Domain category:
game (a contest with rules to determine a winner)
athletics; sport (an active diversion requiring physical exertion and competition)
II. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb defend
Context examples:
Now, in this case, I, who am the right owner, lie under two great disadvantages: first, my lawyer, being practised almost from his cradle in defending falsehood, is quite out of his element when he would be an advocate for justice, which is an unnatural office he always attempts with great awkwardness, if not with ill-will.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Thank you for defending me, and Aunt March for proving that you do care for me a little bit.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
He symbolised it, was its personification: so that when they showed their teeth to him they were defending themselves against the powers of destruction that lurked in the shadows of the forest and in the dark beyond the camp-fire.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
Edmund's first object the next morning was to see his father alone, and give him a fair statement of the whole acting scheme, defending his own share in it as far only as he could then, in a soberer moment, feel his motives to deserve, and acknowledging, with perfect ingenuousness, that his concession had been attended with such partial good as to make his judgment in it very doubtful.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been made.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
