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Use defy in a sentence

Definition of defy:

  • (verb) resist or confront with resistance;
  • (verb) elude, especially in a baffling way
  • (verb) challenge

Sentence Examples:

Her authority was defied, her officer scorned and insulted, her youngest child perverted by the obstinate elder brother.

The cattle shook the water from their sun-dazzled eyes, and turned their heads away from it, but it climbed steadily higher until it stood right over them, and blazing down upon the snowy world, defied old man Winter to his face.

He knew that public opinion was an amazing power, which might be defied, but not successfully resisted.

Oh, they're a mile or two off, and even if they could see the biggest of fires I'd defy them to get half way here if they took the whole night to cut their way through that mass of trailing vines and brush.

I defy him to adduce one single article of his whole faith, (creed rather) which he really derives from the Scripture.

A cry was raised instantly, and all the children left their sports to pursue the boy, who had thus boldly defied their power; and lucky was it for him that he was agile and could twist and turn in his course as rapidly as a hare.

All the little sagging lines about her mouth showed up sharply, defying years of careful massage.

Sheltered behind stone walls they could defy the elements that had enslaved them so long.

Not till my arms grow cold in death I'll clasp him thus, and defy the world to sever us!

The man pulled himself free and again defied the officer of the law with a clenched fist.

An Indian sarcasm vibrates through it, which, with Indian fortitude, defies the inevitable torture.

They settled in the Chaldean marshes, assumed independence and defied the caliph.

There was no decided insubordination during the morning, but I felt Jimmy was waiting for an opportunity to defy me.

The part where she defies her tyrannical father brought down the house.

Of course, this may have been due to the fact that the traffic was so skillfully handled that it defied their inquiries.

The outlaw's instinct to barricade himself and defy everybody up to the last moment came over him.

And yet, as he sat there, in solitary glory, he realized that to revenge does not bring happiness, and could even find it in his heart to envy the steadfast honesty that had defied him at the cost of his own ruin.

Very few judges rise to a great degree of independence or defy popular clamor.

"Besides, it's a casserole, with rice, and I defy you to detect whether the chief ingredient be fish, flesh or fowl."

Thick shadows still defied his vision when he began retracing his steps over the trail he had made the day before.

Relying on this, he prophesies his overthrow, and defies him to do his worst.

Other words bitter as this, which disowned her love and care and defied her authority, the child could not have spoken.

Perhaps, had he remained unconnected, he might still have deceived me; but now I defy his arts.

Off they rushed headlong, but the nearest door was in a square tower a good way off, and when they reached it the door defied their efforts of frantic rage, whilst another shower descended on them from above, accompanied by the usual shout.

I have defied both human opinion and the obstacles which an unfriendly fate has thrown in my way.

A few weeks before, and my state of being had realized a serenity that defied all causes of perturbation and disquiet.

Perry's son and I pulled guns on him and his three companions, when they threatened us with clubs, and this fellow pointed out what he said was the international boundary line between them and us and defied us to cross over and capture them.

Phillips, correspondent of the New York Tribune, and afterwards a member of Congress, was a man terribly in earnest, and he did, on the above-named Fourth of July, in a speech, take the position that we ought to fight for our rights and defy Col.

Helena clung to Lucy's side, defying her indeed to leave her, and Geoffrey could only submit, and count the tardy hours.

Every gap in the masonry was carefully filled up, every window that was wide enough to admit the passage of a human form was guarded by iron bars, and the doors were solid enough to defy for a long time the assault of battering rams.

She never defied his authority, and very rarely took part in his escapades.

The hair of the Newfoundland, thick and long and laid the right way, defies the rains; and your cowboy loathes water.

The oppressor he defies to his beard; the high walls of old opinions he scales with a bound.

Bound together by brotherly love, you may defy almost every mortal ill; divided, you will fall a prey to your enemies.

It was no use for Auntie Louie, more red and more rigid than ever, to defy the imminence of her forty-ninth birthday.

Germany had defied the ultimatum and England had declared war on Germany.

The duchess herself did not propose to defy conventionality to the extent of inviting me to stay.

The authorities have for a long time been trying to lay their hands on this scoundrel and his gang, and if we can catch him it will be a feather in our caps, for he has defied all their efforts for the last three years.

I will not be insulted, and dishonored, and defied in this outrageous manner.

"Yes, I am, Mary," she said, in a low tone, for she felt in a defiant mood, and not suspecting the fatal nature of the lawyer's visit, and feeling very secure in her own position, she rather courted an opportunity to defy him.

With that deficit, they sometimes sit obstinately and defy the boy's approaches.

She defied her own nature; she committed an act of sacred violence against the most clamorous propensities of her heart.

It was fed continually by Indians and rangers, who did not care for the rain, and it alone defied the storm.

Even yet he hoped to deal a mortal stroke at the man who had defied him and all his cut-throat band.

For three weeks these fortifications have defied my cannon, there is scarce a breach yet in the walls of yonder town.

They will get notions from it fatal to our authority; they will become fanatics: they will, in their conceit, defy us.

I was glad when one of the ladies defied the detective by abruptly swishing down her blind.

I defied the nurse and told the white, white little thing on the pillow, that is all the mother I ever had, that one of my friends sent it to her, and I got a flash of a smile, such as I had never had before.

Essie, falsely draped in conventional attributes, defied him to utter the simple truth.

We are aware of the power of Great Britain, and it is not our object to defy that power; but at the same time we cannot allow that might instead of right shall triumph, without having employed all our means to oppose it.

Line after line of wavering figures danced in impish glee before him, defying inspection.

To rush out indignantly, seize my box, defy the brigands, and carry it back myself, seemed the work of an instant.

Wholesome iniquity have you that a man may deal withal, and defy the surgeon?

And then I pitied her who was so meek, and then I was angered at Fortune, which had been so careless of her, and being a rebel I began to defy Fate for her and swear I would set its cruelty at naught and make her happy.

After they had been riding a few minutes, they made a much wider circle, so that they were out of his reach, and one of the number called out that he had shot the herder, and defied the sheriff to capture him.

These encircling flames will consume all antagonism, and defy all approach.

He died, however, as she wished, firmly, but sullenly, and as if he despised and defied the world and its laws.

Now look at this clock; it is electrical, and goes with a regularity that defies the best chronometers.

"If such an animal is in existence, if it inhabits the depths of the ocean, if it frequents the strata lying miles below the surface of the water, it must necessarily possess an organization the strength of which would defy all comparison."

Silently she withdrew her hand, refusing him an answer, defying him with a courage born of the near neighborhood of the Rector and Joan, and a few minutes later the hum of his motor could be heard as it sped away down the drive.

He defied me, confound him, and in the end I had to let him have his way.

To be defied and taunted in this manner was more than he could bear.

That she should defy him, grow as angry as he himself, he had already learned was not impossible; but the cruel hardness of her face as she had sent him away had shocked him more than anything in his whole experience.

The very fortunate have only an acrid taste which defies analysis left them.

Ah, well, it is a comfort to think that some folks defy time, and are as young at seventy as at seventeen.

Even this might have been defied had not Richard set an able and unscrupulous leader at its head.

"That I am not guilty, Sire; and I defy the foreign upstart who brings the accusation."

Myrtle received them with a sort of state which defied the imputation of sadness.

Of course beyond all this there is in architecture, as in music, something which defies analysis, which appeals to our sense of delight we know not how or why, and probably we do not want to know; the charm might be dissolved if we did.

"I got what Lady Maria wanted," she added, and the childlike dimple in her cheek endeavored to defy her eyes.

Mobs march through the streets, defying the police, and demolishing property.

He was scarcely prepared to defy the headman, and he went away to stir up the villagers.

"For instance, it incites and helps you defy your guardian on the street!"

In my amazement and horror I defied him, dared him to do his worst; and recklessly he accepted the rash challenge.

The artisans of the Low Countries had for twenty years defied the whole power of Spain.

He must not allow himself to be defied by a squadron of insolent rovers.

Never before in his life had he been balked and defied and resented as he was by the pretty creature before him.

Our mathematics and our science can break into the circle of the celestial and the terrestrial forces, and weigh and measure and separate them, and in a degree understand them; but the forces of life defy our analysis as well as our synthesis.

We have known only recently of its authenticity, and it defies any sort of attempt to disprove it.

"Well, why in the name of common sense didn't he defy his tarnished old father, and marry the girl he liked?"

"This is beginning to be positively weird and uncanny," she murmured, "but I propose to defy the specter and enter."

I can hear his voice now, trolling Nancy Lee back across the waters, defying them, until the night quenched it.

All instincts of humanity are cynically defied on the specious ground of military necessity.

It defied all my efforts; in death it was as implacable as in life.

They felt now that, so long as they remained in the woods, and maintained their drill and discipline, and persisted in the tactics which they had adopted, they could defy the Spaniards; unless, indeed, the latter came in overwhelming strength.

Openly at odds with his tyrannical oppressors, no matter how often they threatened him, he defied them.

Still, there is in man a primordial and overruling phenomenon which defies analysis.

Nature took on an ominous and threatening hue but within the village there was only joy; the coming storm would remove their greatest danger, the well would fill up again, and behind the wooden walls they could defy the savage foe.

We defy creation to produce another exhibition so entirely and profoundly atrocious as this.

If one has a chameleon's tongue, cut out before the creature's death, he may defy all the sharpers in the world.

The girl had a lover on board, a common soldier, and the two openly defied his interdict.

There was something wild and imperious within him that defied his better self at this moment.

Fixed high on the steepest face of the cliff, the gem had long defied the search of the most daring climbers.

He was determined to act the part of a tyrant with a high hand, and he defied the consequences of his rashness.

He will take you to a little republic, where boys and girls who have defied laws that they did not understand are making laws of their own and enforcing them in a way that makes the ordinary citizen feel ashamed of himself.

You will have to quit that, of course, and start afresh and single-handed in the new house, and it is not likely that those who defy the rules of the school will take at first to a fellow who comes to enforce them.

For a long time I looked sternly into her eyes; but their violet mystery defied, whilst her red-lipped smile taunted me.

As the prince and the seaman joined hands the latter looked up from an altitude of five feet six and squared his broad shoulders with the air of a man ready to defy all creation, and anxious rather than otherwise to do so.

Nor is this all: the North, as in an impregnable fortress, defies the attack of the South.

"Not much," said the woman, with a seriousness that defied any ulterior insinuation.