(v. t.) To renounce or dissolve all bonds of affiance, faith, or obligation with; to reject, refuse, or renounce.
(v. t.) To provoke to combat or strife; to call out to combat; to challenge; to dare; to brave; to set at defiance; to treat with contempt; as, to defy an enemy; to defy the power of a magistrate; to defy the arguments of an opponent; to defy public opinion.
(n.) A challenge.
Example Sentences:
(1) For his lone, perilous journey that defied the US occupation authorities, Burchett was pilloried, not least by his embedded colleagues.
(2) "We have Revolutionary Guards who defied orders, though they were severely punished, expelled from the force and taken to prison," he says.
(3) He said his party was determined to go ahead with the poll, even if it meant defying Spain's constitutional court, which Rull dismissed as biased.
(4) When several of its semi-autonomous cars were caught running red lights, the state ordered their removal from the road – an order Uber openly defied , blaming the traffic light violations on “human error” and suspending the people monitoring the cars.
(5) Speaker Paul Ryan and majority leader Kevin McCarthy, the two top House Republicans, had argued in Monday’s meeting – held with no prior notice – against making the unilateral ethics change, calling for a bipartisan approach at a later date, but rank-and-file Republicans defied their leadership.
(6) Heidi Allen, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, abstained in last week’s vote but said she and others would defy the party whip if concessions were not offered.
(7) Barack Obama has defied a Republican Congress to move ahead on his climate agenda on Wednesday, cracking down on methane emissions from America’s oil and natural gas boom.
(8) The home secretary, Theresa May , has defied her own expert advisers and banned qat, a mild herbal stimulant that is traditionally used by Britain's Somali, Yemeni and Ethiopian communities.
(9) No call for the resurrection of the proud, shared traditions of Scots, Welsh and English people as they defied the powerful to build a better society; no convincing pledge that a new Britain would be forged, just and equal and fair unlike what New Labour failed to deliver.
(10) Some samples with complex patterns defied classification, and it is speculated that these may be from persons with duplicated C7 genes.
(11) Sales on the high street were much higher than expected this month, rising at their fastest rate in six years as consumers defied the gloomy economic outlook.
(12) But the instruction issued by the party headquarters in Paris was defied by the Socialist candidate in the Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine region, who came third but announced he would stand for the second round anyway.
(13) This was the childhood playground of actor Richard Harris, where he performed death-defying handstands and cycling tricks on the cliffside walls when not showboating by the sea.
(14) Just as no single description is universally applicable to the mode of action of vitamin A derivatives, so too do their toxic effects defy generalization.
(15) He has been held without charges since his arrest on 5 June but has been informed that under martial law he faces up to 14 years in prison on possible charges of inciting unrest, violating cyber laws and defying the junta's orders.
(16) Writers should be making more of an effort to write interesting parts for actors of colour that defy stereotypes, or implementing a Geena Davis type solution (simply change any character in a script into a woman) for race.
(17) It defies the logic of personal ambition that grows stronger with proximity to the biggest job in the world.
(18) It was so I could tell Jeremy that I had backed him.” Corbyn has defied not only Fletcher’s expectations but everyone else’s.
(19) But, since then, it has fallen to around $1,660 (£1,047) defying predictions – and the hopes of speculators – that it would continue to hit new peaks during the ongoing financial turmoil.
(20) For the last five months, he has enjoyed unprecedented political dominance, after an election where the SNP defied the logic of Holyrood's semi-proportional system by winning an absolute majority, sweeping into power with nearly 50% of the vote.
Evil
Definition:
(a.) Having qualities tending to injury and mischief; having a nature or properties which tend to badness; mischievous; not good; worthless or deleterious; poor; as, an evil beast; and evil plant; an evil crop.
(a.) Having or exhibiting bad moral qualities; morally corrupt; wicked; wrong; vicious; as, evil conduct, thoughts, heart, words, and the like.
(a.) Producing or threatening sorrow, distress, injury, or calamity; unpropitious; calamitous; as, evil tidings; evil arrows; evil days.
(n.) Anything which impairs the happiness of a being or deprives a being of any good; anything which causes suffering of any kind to sentient beings; injury; mischief; harm; -- opposed to good.
(n.) Moral badness, or the deviation of a moral being from the principles of virtue imposed by conscience, or by the will of the Supreme Being, or by the principles of a lawful human authority; disposition to do wrong; moral offence; wickedness; depravity.
(n.) malady or disease; especially in the phrase king's evil, the scrofula.
(adv.) In an evil manner; not well; ill; badly; unhappily; injuriously; unkindly.
Example Sentences:
(1) King Salman of Saudi Arabia urged the redoubling of efforts to “eradicate this dangerous scourge and rid the world of its evils”.
(2) More evil than Clocky , the alarm clock that rolls away when you reach out to silence it, or the Puzzle Alarm , which makes you complete a simple puzzle before it'll go quiet, the Money Shredding Alarm Clock methodically destroys your cash unless you rouse yourself.
(3) To confront this evil – and defeat it, standing together for our values, for our security, for our prosperity.” Merkel gave a strong endorsement of Cameron’s reform strategy, saying that Britain’s demands were “not just understandable, but worthy of support”.
(4) "Our black, Muslim and Jewish citizens will sleep much less easily now the BBC has legitimised the BNP by treating its racist poison as the views of just another mainstream political party when it is so uniquely evil and dangerous."
(5) Richard now is presented, albeit somewhat inconsistently, as evil in response to social ostracism because of his ugly deformities.
(6) One view of these results stems from the belief that contraception is a necessary evil and the pill is the closest to a 'natural' sex act.
(7) Answer, citing Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” This is a very British suicide.
(8) So that you know he's evil, he is dressed like a giant, bedraggled grey duckling, in a fur coat made up of bits of chewed-up wolf.
(9) How World of Warcraft train future soldiers One odder digression sees the two discussing whether or not MMORPGs, video games like World of Warcraft, are evil.
(10) The deputy prime minister branded the treatment meted out to the four-year-old by his mother, Magdelena Luczak, and stepfather, Mariusz Krezolek, as evil and vile, but suggested it was up to the whole of society to stop such tragedies.
(11) We make mistakes, and fall victim to the temptations of pride, and power, and sometimes evil.
(12) Questioned as to whether Google needs to alter its mission statement, which was twinned with the company mantra “don’t be evil, for the next stage of company growth in an interview with the Financial Times , Page responded: “We’re in a bit of uncharted territory.
(13) "I have been an evil witch, but now I can set light to the house and die happy."
(14) But at some point I realized that it's precisely because they continuously justify so much violence and aggression from their side that they have such a boundless compulsion to depict others as the Uniquely Primitive and Violent Evil.
(15) For here we see the depravity to which man can sink, the barbarity that unfolds when we begin to see our fellow human beings as somehow less than us, less worthy of dignity and life; we see how evil can, for a moment in time, triumph when good people do nothing."
(16) The US said it had removed North Korea – once a member of George Bush's axis of evil – from the terror list to breathe life into the stalled nuclear negotiations and would continue to pressure Pyongyang to resolve the abduction issue.
(17) As he described, with something approaching relish, the horrifying effect of a desperate eurozone willing to destroy the British economy, our industry and our society, purely to protect itself, I was reminded of the epic Last Judgement by John Martin, now in the Tate, which depicts the terrifying chaos as the good are separated from the evil damned.
(18) Channel One also branded Berezovsky an "evil genius," and a report on his demise quoted a senior member of the ruling United Russia , Vyacheslav Nikonov, saying he found it hard to believe the news was true.
(19) In recent months there have been series of protests against the intensifying campaign, with one Catholic leader denouncing the cross removals as an “evil act” .
(20) Time and again they said to me: ‘I knew I shouldn’t, but I had to weigh it up against what was happening, and it was the lesser of two evils.’ Years later many of these women are still ashamed of themselves.