(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.
Strife
Definition:
(n.) The act of striving; earnest endeavor.
(n.) Exertion or contention for superiority; contest of emulation, either by intellectual or physical efforts.
(n.) That which is contended against; occasion of contest.
Example Sentences:
(1) Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian A journey that started five years ago with a promise to bring Labour together – to avoid the civil strife that traditionally followed election defeat – risks ending where it began: contemplating electoral wilderness.
(2) Almost three years after US troops withdrew from Iraq and 11 years after their invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, the war on Islamic State is drawing Washington back into the middle of Iraq’s power struggles and bloody sectarian strife.
(3) Overall, the couples who successfully completed therapy were in less strifeful marriages and were confronted with specific life change events as opposed to the couples who dropped out, who gave evidence of chronic marital difficulties.
(4) Economic openness is the glue that binds the EU together and it is the solution to the crisis of European competitiveness that long predates the current strife.
(5) Many blamed that failure for the industrial strife which dogged the Wilson and Callaghan governments over the following decade.
(6) On the biggest question of our time – Britain’s membership of the European Union, internal strife has left the government without a clear position, as party interest trumps national interest.
(7) The majority of these children come from Guatemala , Honduras and El Salvador – three of the many countries ravaged by civil strife, drug wars and economic turmoil precipitated by US political and military intervention over several decades, as well as free-trade regimes and the corporate plunder of Latin America's natural resources.
(8) Organised crime has taken hold and human trafficking has flourished thanks to arranged marriages, giving rise to more family strife.
(9) Sam Akaki Democratic Institutions for Poverty Reduction in Africa • There are calls for the EU to act to save migrants from drowning in the Mediterranean, but where are the calls for the UN to tackle the strife and oppression in South Sudan, Eritrea, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan … which are the root cause of this problem?
(10) After an extraordinary year, experts say the site now faces a series of challenges – not least the problem of how to keep getting bigger in the face of government interventions and its own internal strife.
(11) Current western complacency and silence will only bring more chaos and strife.
(12) Their first season in the Premier League has seen further off-field strife with the sacking as head of recruitment of Iain Moody , who was replaced by a friend of Tan's son who has no football background.
(13) Yet to black Americans who are all too familiar with the burdens of segregation and the struggle for equality, this idyllic image of a gentle country without racial strife sounds like absurd propaganda.
(14) Sunday's poll brought months of strife to a bloody climax, with 19 people reported killed in unrest across the country .
(15) Libya’s spiral into chaos is a story of international neglect as well as of domestic strife.
(16) Then the total trends of the suicide rate were reexamined in comparison with a control group, and the recent trends after the student strife (1970) were confirmed in comparison with the 15-year period before the strife.
(17) Her case that the state had become too dominant and that trade union power needed to be curbed seemed plausible given the industrial strife of the winter of discontent.
(18) The expectation that care will be provided to old people by their daughters or daughters-in-law may be frustrated if the younger generation of women are disabled or otherwise engaged, resulting in possible family strife or rejection.
(19) Decades of ethnic strife in India's north-east have forced hundreds of thousands of young people to move out of the region in search of education and employment.
(20) I’m not consciously melancholic – in fact, I am often the opposite – so that melancholy feel must come from the way I use chords.” Stolen Recordings William Doyle, aka East India Youth, on Total Strife Forever (Stolen Recordings) “ Total Strife Forever was a really important step for me personally.