To defeat someone is to win against them in a game, battle, or competition. As a noun, it means the experience of losing.
It comes from Old French “defaite,” meaning “undoing, destruction,” from Latin “defacere,” “to undo, destroy,” from “de-” (down, away) and “facere” (to do, make). The idea is of un‑doing someone’s efforts.
Defeat feels like everything you built just got taken apart—and that’s literally in the word’s history. But that also means you can rebuild; what was “un‑done” can be done again, often better informed.
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