Word.ws English Dictionary

defeat the purpose

defeat the purpose verb: to undermine the act of doing something by having an opposite effect; to nullify.

Verb

defeat the purpose (third-person singular simple present defeats the purpose, present participle defeating the purpose, simple past and past participle defeated the purpose)

  1. To undermine the act of doing something by having an opposite effect; to nullify.

Forms of defeat the purpose

third-person singular presentdefeats the purpose
present participledefeating the purpose
past participledefeated the purpose
pastdefeated the purpose

Questions about defeat the purpose

What does defeat the purpose mean?
Defeat the purpose means to undermine the act of doing something by having an opposite effect; to nullify.
What part of speech is defeat the purpose?
Defeat the purpose is a verb.
What is the past tense of defeat the purpose?
The past tense of defeat the purpose is defeated the purpose.

Words near defeat the purpose in the dictionary

  1. defeasible fees
  2. defeasibleness
  3. defeasibly
  4. defeasing
  5. defeat
  6. defeat the purpose
  7. defeatability
  8. defeatable
  9. defeated
  10. defeatedly
  11. defeatedness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: defeat the purpose (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “defeat the purpose.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/defeat_the_purpose. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.