| / English Dictionary |
DEFIANCE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A defiant act
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("defiance" is a kind of...):
resistance (group action in opposition to those in power)
Derivation:
defiant (boldly resisting authority or an opposing force)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Intentionally contemptuous behavior or attitude
Synonyms:
defiance; rebelliousness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("defiance" is a kind of...):
intractability; intractableness (the trait of being hard to influence or control)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "defiance"):
insubordination (defiance of authority)
obstreperousness (noisy defiance)
Derivation:
defiant (boldly resisting authority or an opposing force)
Sense 3
Meaning:
A hostile challenge
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("defiance" is a kind of...):
challenge (a call to engage in a contest or fight)
Derivation:
defiant (boldly resisting authority or an opposing force)
defy (challenge)
Context examples:
Her eyes fluttered down, then they opened and looked into his with soft defiance.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
This very day I will send him my cartel and defiance.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
You won't have anything else here. and having delivered her defiance all on one breath, Meg cast away her pinafore and precipitately left the field to bemoan herself in her own room.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
They called each other by their Christian name, were always arm in arm when they walked, pinned up each other's train for the dance, and were not to be divided in the set; and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
That the manner in which she treated the dreadful crime committed by her brother and my sister (with whom lay the greater seduction I pretended not to say), but the manner in which she spoke of the crime itself, giving it every reproach but the right; considering its ill consequences only as they were to be braved or overborne by a defiance of decency and impudence in wrong; and last of all, and above all, recommending to us a compliance, a compromise, an acquiescence in the continuance of the sin, on the chance of a marriage which, thinking as I now thought of her brother, should rather be prevented than sought; all this together most grievously convinced me that I had never understood her before, and that, as far as related to mind, it had been the creature of my own imagination, not Miss Crawford, that I had been too apt to dwell on for many months past.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
If we were obliged to go out such an evening as this, by any call of duty or business, what a hardship we should deem it;—and here are we, probably with rather thinner clothing than usual, setting forward voluntarily, without excuse, in defiance of the voice of nature, which tells man, in every thing given to his view or his feelings, to stay at home himself, and keep all under shelter that he can;—here are we setting forward to spend five dull hours in another man's house, with nothing to say or to hear that was not said and heard yesterday, and may not be said and heard again to-morrow.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
She wore a great hat with a white curling ostrich feather, and from under its brim her two bold, black eyes stared out with a look of anger and defiance as if to tell the folk that she thought less of them than they could do of her.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Mrs Smith's enjoyments were not spoiled by this improvement of income, with some improvement of health, and the acquisition of such friends to be often with, for her cheerfulness and mental alacrity did not fail her; and while these prime supplies of good remained, she might have bid defiance even to greater accessions of worldly prosperity.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
At which direct defiance the stubborn sneer would reappear upon Professor Summerlee's face, and he would sit, shaking his sardonic head in unsympathetic silence, behind the cloud of his briar-root pipe.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
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