defeat.
To overcome in battle or contest.
Meaning & usage
To overcome in battle or contest.
Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.
To reduce, to nothing, the strength of.
To nullify
To prevent (something) from being achieved.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English defeten, from Middle English defet (“disfigured”, past participle) and defet (“defect”, noun), see Etymology 2 below.
The act or instance of being defeated, of being overcome or vanquished; a loss.
Licking their wounds after a temporary defeat, they planned their next move.
The act or instance of defeating, of overcoming, vanquishing.
The inscription records her defeat of the country's enemies in a costly war.
Frustration (by prevention of success), stymieing; (law) nullification.
Destruction, ruin.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English defet, from French deffet, desfait, past participle of the verb desfaire (compare modern French défaire), from des- + faire.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.