Defy vs Define - What's the difference?
defy | define |
(obsolete) A challenge.
To renounce or dissolve all bonds of affiance, faith, or obligation with; to reject, refuse, or renounce.
* 1603-1625 , (Beaumont and Fletcher)
To challenge (someone) to do something difficult.
* 1671 , (John Milton), (Samson Agonistes)
* 1900 , Edith King Hall, Adventures in Toyland Chapter 6
*:"So you actually think yours is good-looking?" sneered the Baker. "Why, I could make a better-looking one out of a piece of dough."
*:"I defy you to," the Hansom-driver replied. "A face like mine is not easily copied. Nor am I the only person of that opinion. All the ladies think that I am beautiful. And of course I go by what they think."
To refuse to obey.
* 2005 , , Presidential Radio Address - 19 March 2005
*:Before coalition forces arrived, Iraq was ruled by a dictatorship that murdered its own citizens, threatened its neighbors, and defied the world.
*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-10, volume=408, issue=8848, magazine=(The Economist), author=Lexington
, title= To not conform to or follow a pattern or certain set of rules.
* 1955 , Anonymous, The Urantia Book Paper 41
*:By tossing this nineteenth electron back and forth between its own orbit and that of its lost companion more than twenty-five thousand times a second, a mutilated stone atom is able partially to defy gravity and thus successfully to ride the emerging streams of light and energy, the sunbeams, to liberty and adventure.
* 2013 , Jeré Longman in the New York Times,
*:“To be determined,” Kane said, “is whether Griner and her towering skill and engaging personality will defy the odds and attract corporate sponsors as part of widespread public acceptance four decades after passage of the gender-equity legislation known as Title IX.”
To determine with precision; to mark out with distinctness; to ascertain or exhibit clearly.
* Sir (Isaac Newton)
*{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author=
, title= (obsolete) To settle, decide (an argument etc.).
* 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , IV.3:
To express the essential nature of something.
*{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author=
, volume=101, issue=3, page=178, magazine=(American Scientist)
, title= To state the meaning of a word, phrase, sign, or symbol.
To describe, explain, or make definite and clear.
To demark sharply the outlines or limits of an area or concept.
*{{quote-magazine, year=2012, month=March-April, author=(Jan Sapp)
, volume=100, issue=2, page=164, magazine=(American Scientist)
, title= (mathematics) To establish the referent of a term or notation.
(computing, programming) A kind of macro in source code that replaces one text string with another wherever it occurs.
* 1996 , James Gosling, Henry McGilton, The Java Language Environment
* 1999 , Ian Joyner, Objects unencapsulated: Java, Eiffel, and C++ (page 309)
In obsolete terms the difference between defy and define
is that defy is a challenge while define is to settle, decide (an argument etc.).defy
English
Noun
(defies)- (Dryden)
Verb
(en-verb)- For thee I have defied my constant mistress.
- I once again / Defie thee to the trial of mortal fight.
Keeping the mighty honest, passage=British journalists shun complete respectability, feeling a duty to be ready to savage the mighty, or rummage through their bins. Elsewhere in Europe, government contracts and subsidies ensure that press barons will only defy the mighty so far.}}
W.N.B.A. Hopes Griner Can Change Perceptions, as Well as Game Itself
Derived terms
* death-defyingAnagrams
*define
English
(Definition)Verb
(defin)- Ringsvery distinct and well defined .
Lee S. Langston
The Adaptable Gas Turbine, passage=Turbines have been around for a long time—windmills and water wheels are early examples. The name comes from the Latin turbo'', meaning ''vortex , and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft that can perform useful work.}}
- These warlike Champions, all in armour shine, / Assembled were in field the chalenge to define .
Crinkly Curves, passage=Cantor defined a one-to-one correspondence between the points of the square and the points of the line segment. Every point in the square was associated with a single point in the segment; every point in the segment was matched with a unique point in the square.}}
Race Finished, passage=Few concepts are as emotionally charged as that of race. The word conjures up a mixture of associations—culture, ethnicity, genetics, subjugation, exclusion and persecution. But is the tragic history of efforts to define groups of people by race really a matter of the misuse of science, the abuse of a valid biological concept?}}
Derived terms
* definable * definerNoun
(en noun)- From the computer programming perspective, Java looks like C and C++ while discarding the overwhelming complexities of those languages, such as typedefs, defines , preprocessor, unions, pointers, and multiple inheritance.
- Anyone who has attempted to do OO programming in a conventional language using defines will find out that it is impossible to realize the benefits easily, if at all, without compiler support.