Word.ws English Dictionary

defeats

defeats is the plural of defeat.

defeats is the third-person singular simple present indicative of defeat.

Meaning of defeat

Noun

defeat (countable and uncountable, plural defeats)

  1. The act or instance of being defeated, of being overcome or vanquished; a loss.
    • Licking their wounds after a temporary defeat, they planned their next move.
  2. The act or instance of defeating, of overcoming, vanquishing.
    • The inscription records her defeat of the country's enemies in a costly war.
  3. Frustration (by prevention of success), stymieing; (law) nullification.
    • ... is subsequently issued to him, in accordance with his perfect equity thus acquired, by a legal fiction which the law creates for the protection, but not for the defeat, of his title.1909, The Southern Reporter, page 250
  4. (obsolete) Destruction, ruin.
    • and made defeat of her virginity1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...

See all 8 meanings of defeat

Questions about defeats

What is defeats the plural of?
Defeats is the plural of defeat.

Words near defeats in the dictionary

  1. defeatless
  2. defeatment
  3. defeatments
  4. defeatocrat
  5. defeatocrats
  6. defeats
  7. defeature
  8. defeatured
  9. defeatures
  10. defeaturing
  11. Defebaugh

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: defeats (page history and authors); defeat (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-defeats.ogg.

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