defeat

tr.v., -feat·ed, -feat·ing, -feats.

1. To win victory over; beat.
2. To prevent the success of; thwart: Internal strife defeats the purpose of teamwork.
3. Law. To make void; annul.

n.

1. The act of defeating or state of being defeated.
2. Failure to win.
3. A coming to naught; frustration: the defeat of a lifelong dream.
4. Law. The act of making null and void.

[Middle English defeten, from defet, disfigured, from Old French desfait, past participle of desfaire, to destroy, from Medieval Latin disfacere, to destroy, mutilate, undo : Latin dis-, dis- + Latin facere, to do.]

defeater de·feat'er n.

SYNONYMS   defeat, conquer, vanquish, beat, rout, subdue, subjugate, overcome. These verbs mean to triumph over an adversary. Defeat is the most general: "Whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same" (Thomas Paine). Conquer suggests decisive and often wide-scale victory: "The Franks . . . having conquered the Gauls, established the kingdom which has taken its name from them" (Alexander Hamilton). Vanquish emphasizes total mastery: Napoleon's forces were vanquished at Waterloo. Beat is similar to defeat, though less formal and often more emphatic: "To win battles . . . you beat the soul . . . of the enemy man" (George S. Patton). Rout implies complete victory followed by the disorderly flight of the defeated force: The enemy was routed in the first battle. Subdue suggests mastery and control achieved by overpowering: "It cost [the Romans] two great wars, and three great battles, to subdue that little kingdom [Macedonia]" (Adam Smith). Subjugate more strongly implies reducing an opponent to submission: "The last foreigner to subjugate England was a Norman duke in the Middle Ages named William" (Stanley Meisler). To overcome is to prevail over, often by persevering: He overcame his injury after months of physical therapy.

verb

1. To win a victory over, as in battle or a competition: beat, best, conquer, master, overcome, prevail against (or over), rout, subdue, subjugate, surmount, triumph over, vanquish, worst. Informal trim, whip. Slang ace, lick. Idioms: carrywinthe day, gethavethe best of, gethavethe better of, go someone one better. See win/lose/recovery.
2. To prevent from accomplishing a purpose: baffle, balk, check, checkmate, foil, frustrate, stymie, thwart. Informal cross, stump. Idioms: cut the ground from under. See allow/prevent.

noun

The act of defeating or the condition of being defeated: beating, drubbing, overthrow, rout, thrashing, vanquishment. Informal massacre, trimming, whipping. Slang dusting, licking. See win/lose/recovery.

n

Definition: frustration
Antonyms: attainment, mastery, success, triumph

n

Definition: overthrow, beating
Antonyms: conquest, success, triumph, victory, win

v

Definition: conquer in contest
Antonyms: give up, lose, surrender

v

Definition: frustrate
Antonyms: abet, aid, encourage, help, inspirit

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Until the 1970s, Americans did not think much about defeat. U.S. military leaders usually defined war aims in terms of total victory, and the civilian culture they defended assumed that God guided the nation's fate and ensured its success. With a profound innocence, Americans denied those defeats that did occur and assumed their invincibility.

This sense of innocence and invincibility had deep roots in American history. During the Revolutionary War, the American revolutionaries met with defeat and in many ways failed to live up to their own ideals. Led by the Continental army, Americans still won their independence. Once they did, they gave little credit to the army or to French aid, rarely dwelt on their defeats, but instead portrayed their victory as testimony to their own and the nation's virtue. The War of 1812 offered a greater challenge to Americans' mythmaking powers. The military met frequent defeat in battle and the outcome of the war could at best be labeled a draw. Nevertheless, Americans came to remember this war too as a victory.

In the century and a half that followed, the United States sometimes endured defeat on the battlefield, but won its wars. In the Mexican, Civil, Indian, and Spanish‐American Wars, the United States achieved the near‐total victories its strategists sought. This persistent success deepened Americans' faith in their innocence, invincibility, and special favor in God's sight. After World War I, some Americans, disillusioned by the peace as well as by the war, questioned whether U.S. intervention had been wise; but World War II, with its total, if hard‐earned, victory over foes Americans found evil, reaffirmed their conviction of invincibility and virtue. In the two decades that followed, the United States's sense of its power and rectitude never seemed surer.

Writing in the midst of this collective sense of American innocence, the historian C. Vann Woodward challenged it by pointing to the history of the American South. Unlike other Americans, Woodward argued, white Southerners had experienced military defeat. The loss of the Civil War, along with poverty, guilt, and other frustrations, could have created a unique southern identity, one that would have offered an important corrective to the sense of innocence and invincibility that dominated American culture as a whole. Many southern intellectuals embraced Woodward's view and maintained that southern culture had been chastened, yet ennobled, by defeat. Other historians questioned such assumptions. They found that white Southerners interpreted the loss of the war as a sign of God's favor, blamed defeat on factors outside of their control, and celebrated the heroism, nobility, and fighting ability of Confederates. Defeat did not force them to reexamine old myths and assumptions; rather, like other Americans, Southerners celebrated a glorious, military achievement. And in the Spanish‐American War, they demonstrated their continued faith in American invincibility and inevitable victory. They did as well, as Woodward himself noted, in their involvement in and support for the Vietnam War.

American defeat in Vietnam, though, forced Americans, North and South, to confront their assumptions of invincibility. A few Americans, including some political leaders, at times claimed that the United States had never really been defeated on the field of battle. But this time the mythmaking seemed to fail; most Americans accepted the reality of what they saw as America's first defeat in war. Others, especially those in the military, searched for the cause of this defeat. Some blamed it on antiwar protesters or the press; others questioned American strategy or pointed to mistakes made by the military. Almost all agreed that the absence of a national consensus in favor of the war and the policy of phased escalation contributed to America's failure.

The latter lesson of defeat, the importance of delivering massive amounts of force at the beginning of the war, clearly shaped military strategy in the United States's next “major” military confrontation, the Persian Gulf War. The military employed overwhelming airpower and as many soldiers as had served in Vietnam at its height to win the war in days. In the wake of the victory, some talked of having buried the ghosts of Vietnam, by which they apparently meant not just America's post‐Vietnam hesitancy to use military force abroad but also doubts about American innocence and invincibility as well. Whether the Gulf War has revived those myths remains to be seen, as does just how profoundly defeat in Vietnam has affected American attitudes toward war and its sense of providential blessing.

[See also War: American Way of War; Vietnam War: Changing Interpretations; Victory.]

Bibliography

• C. Vann Woodward, The Burden of Southern History, 1960; 3rd rev. ed. 1993.
• Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy, 1973.
• Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775–1783, 1979.
• Gaines M. Foster, Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865–1913, 1987.
• Gaines M. Foster, Coming to Terms with Defeat: Post‐Vietnam America and the Post–Civil War South, Virginia Quarterly Review, 66 (Winter 1990), pp. 17–35

IN BRIEF: To overcome or win a victory over.

The soldiers hoped to defeat the forces of evil.

Quotes:

"For by superior energies; more strict affiance in each other; faith more firm in their unhallowed principles, the bad have fairly earned a victory over the weak, the vacillating, inconsistent good." - William Wordsworth

"Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure." - George E. Woodberry

"Who asks whether the enemy were defeated by strategy or valor?" - Virgil

"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat." - Source Unknown

"The mark of a great player is in his ability to come back. The great champions have all come back from defeat." - Sam Snead

"A man is not defeated by his opponents but by himself." - Jan Christian Smuts

See more famous quotes about Defeat

Defeat

Dansk (Danish)
v. tr. - besejre, slå, forpurre, forkaste, nedstemme, annullere
n. - nederlag, forkastelse, annullering

Nederlands (Dutch)
verslaan, het verstand te boven gaan, dwarsbomen, verijdelen, verwerpen, tenietdoen, nietig verklaren, nederlaag

Français (French)
v. tr. - vaincre, battre, frustrer, ruiner (des espoirs), faire échouer, mettre en minorité (un Parlement), rejeter (une loi), mettre en déroute
n. - défaite, échec, rejet

Deutsch (German)
v. - besiegen, schlagen, aufheben
n. - Niederlage, Scheitern

Ελληνική (Greek)
v. - νικώ, κατατροπώνω, ανατρέπω ή ματαιώνω (σχέδια κ.λπ.)
n. - ήττα, κατατρόπωση, κάζο, νίλα, (μτφ.) ανατροπή ή ματαίωση (σχεδίων κ.λπ.)

Italiano (Italian)
rigettare, sconfiggere, contrariare, sconfitta

Português (Portuguese)
v. - derrotar
n. - derrota (f)

Русский (Russian)
побеждать, сводить на нет, разрушать, победа, отмена

Español (Spanish)
v. tr. - rechazar, denegar, rehusar, derrotar, vencer, hacer fracasar, desbaratar
n. - derrota, fracaso, caída, rechazo, destrucción

Svenska (Swedish)
v. - besegra, slå tillbaka
n. - nederlag, förkastande

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
击败, 使失败, 战胜, 败北, 失败

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
v. tr. - 擊敗, 使失敗, 戰勝
n. - 敗北, 失敗

한국어 (Korean)
v. tr. - 무찌르다, 좌절 시키다, 폐지하다, 폐기
n. - 패배, 무찌름, 좌절

日本語 (Japanese)
v. - 破る, 負かす, くつがえす
n. - 打破, 打破されること, 敗北, 挫折, 破ること

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(فعل) يهزم, يغلب, يحبط, يمنع شئ من النجاح (الاسم) الهزيمه, إيقاع الهزيمه بشئ, إحباط‏

עברית (Hebrew)
v. tr. - ‮סיכל, גבר על, הביס‬
n. - ‮מפלה, הפסד, תבוסה‬

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day of defeat	day of defeat source