Defy vs Diminish - What's the difference?
defy | diminish |
(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 make smaller.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2012-12-14
, author=Simon Jenkins, authorlink=Simon Jenkins, volume=188, issue=2, page=23
, date=2012-12-21, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= To become smaller.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= To lessen the authority or dignity of; to put down; to degrade; to abase; to weaken.
* Robynson (More's Utopia)
* Bible, Ezekiel xxix. 15
* Milton
To taper.
To disappear gradually.
To take away; to subtract.
* Bible, Deuteronomy iv. 2
(music) To reduce a perfect or minor interval by a semitone.
As verbs the difference between defy and diminish
is that defy is to renounce or dissolve all bonds of affiance, faith, or obligation with; to reject, refuse, or renounce while diminish is to make smaller.As a noun defy
is (obsolete) a challenge.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
*diminish
English
Verb
(es)We mustn't overreact to North Korea boys' toys, passage=The threat of terrorism to the British lies in the overreaction to it of British governments. Each one in turn clicks up the ratchet of surveillance, intrusion and security. Each one diminishes liberty.}}
Old soldiers?, passage=Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine.
- This doth nothing diminish their opinion.
- I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations.
- O thou at whose sight all the stars / Hide their diminished heads.
- Neither shall ye diminish aught from it.