Word.ws English Dictionary

prevent defense

/pɹəˈvɛnt ˈdiːˌfɛns/

prevent defense noun: any defense intended to prevent rapid scoring by the offense, at the expense of allowing relatively easy, slower scoring.

Noun

prevent defense (plural prevent defenses)

  1. Any defense intended to prevent rapid scoring by the offense, at the expense of allowing relatively easy, slower scoring.
    • In order to cope with this situation, we developed a simple prevent defense which was designed primarily to negate the long touchdown play. Originally, the 5-3 prevent defense was used in the latter moments of the second and fourth quarters ...1960, “The 5-3 Prevent Defense”, in Athletic Journal, volume 41, page 32
    • There were still forty seconds remaining, so the Bucks went into a prevent defense, with eight men back to guard against long passes. The Mustang halfback was able to pick up some ground, but not enough to score2001, Robert Hirschfeld, Matt Christopher, Football Nightmare, football, most common (& earliest?) use [not this quote], page 118

Examples of prevent defense in a sentence

  • Much of the third period was a stalemate, with the Illini successfully clearing out the puck and playing prevent defense.2019 September 30, Carson Gourdie, The Daily Illini, hockey:
  • I told them, ‘If we score one goal, we’re gonna go prevent defense and we’re going to shut them down, because people have done that to us before.’ ”2019 November 19, Michael Shattuck, “Hometeam: Grace Martin, defense power Millbury [girls' soccer team] past Lenox to gain state final”...
  • “… It was almost prevent defense, but we were just trying to kind of keep the game at bay, and I think we were trying to prevent quick scores and have them really use clock. …”2019 December 7, Geoff Grammer, “Lobos dominate inside, move to 2-0 in MWC with win at Wyoming”, in Albuquerque Journal, basketball:

Forms of prevent defense

pluralprevent defenses

Questions about prevent defense

What does prevent defense mean?
Prevent defense means any defense intended to prevent rapid scoring by the offense, at the expense of allowing relatively easy, slower scoring.
How do you use prevent defense in a sentence?
Much of the third period was a stalemate, with the Illini successfully clearing out the puck and playing prevent defense.
What part of speech is prevent defense?
Prevent defense is a noun.
How do you pronounce prevent defense?
Prevent defense is pronounced /pɹəˈvɛnt ˈdiːˌfɛns/.
What is the plural of prevent defense?
The plural of prevent defense is prevent defenses.

Words near prevent defense in the dictionary

  1. prevenient
  2. prevenient grace
  3. preveniently
  4. prevening
  5. prevent
  6. prevent defense
  7. prevent defenses
  8. preventabilities
  9. preventability
  10. preventable
  11. preventableness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prevent defense (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: “prevent defense.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/prevent_defense. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.