defended

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of defend.

   The lawyer defended her client against the fraud charges.

   The garrison had defended the valley for nearly a century.

   Note

   A regular past form that carries every meaning of defend: troops defend a pass, a lawyer defends a client, and a champion defends a title. As a participle it builds the perfect with have (had defended) and the passive with be (was defended). Placed before a noun as a description, as in a defended position, it has become the adjective of protection.

2. 2
   adjective

   Provided with means of protection against attack.

   The fortress was the most heavily defended position along the coast.

   Engineers built a well defended outpost ringed by trenches and barriers.

   Similarfortified, protected, guarded

   Oppositeundefended, unprotected, exposed, vulnerable

   Note

   Unlike the courtroom use, this one is gradable: things are more or less defended, and comparatives come naturally. Ecologists apply it to plants armed with chemistry, as in Palo and Robbins's Plant Defenses Against Mammalian Herbivory (1991), where a juvenile phase is "more defended chemically" than the mature one. Dorothy Judd's Give Sorrow Words (2018) turns it on people, describing a family braced emotionally against painful news.

3. 3
   adjective

   Of a legal case: one in which the defendant formally responds to the allegations, usually by filing a defense or counterclaim in court.

   A defended claim proceeds to trial once both sides have set out their arguments.

   In a defended action, the court must weigh evidence from both parties before ruling.

   Similarcontested

   Oppositeundefended, uncontested

   Note

   A legal label that works as a yes-or-no switch: a case is either defended or it is not, so it never takes more or most. Its partner is undefended, and the distinction carries weight. Ruth Lamont's Family Law (2018) observes that courts apply a lower threshold for behavior in undefended cases. The standard phrase is a defended case, and it appears in divorce reporting as far back as 1910.

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