Defend

How to spell defend

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce defend

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does defend mean?

1. verbTo protect someone or something from attack, harm, or criticism.
2. verbIn sport, to try to stop the opposing team from scoring, or to compete to retain a title.

Defend in a sentence

• The soldiers were ready to defend the town through the night.

• The team trained hard to defend their lead in the final minutes.

• A good lawyer will defend the client with every fact available.

• The champion returned to defend the title she had won last season.

Where does defend come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin defendere, which meant 'to ward off' or 'to drive away', and was built from the prefix de- meaning 'off' or 'away' and the verb fendere meaning 'to strike' or 'to hit'. English took it through Old French defendre in the 1200s, where it carried both the sense of protecting and, interestingly, of forbidding (a meaning still alive in the French defendre, 'to forbid'). Over time English settled on the protective sense, so that to defend something is to strike away whatever threatens it. The same fendere root, which never survived as a standalone word in English, also hides inside 'offend' (to strike against) and 'fender' (the part of a car that wards off knocks), and recognising that shared 'fend' core helps fix the single d in the middle and the d at the end.

How the word is built

• de- (off, away)
• fend (to strike, ward off, from Latin fendere)