defies

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of defy.

   The new champion defies every expectation the critics had set.

   This ancient tower defies the laws of balance that engineers take for granted.

   Note

   Here is the form nearly every reader actually meets, used after he, she, it or a singular noun. The verb is transitive, so it takes a direct object with no preposition. That object can be a person challenged, an order refused, or a pattern or expectation broken. An older sense, renouncing a bond of faith or obligation, is obsolete and turns up only in old texts.

2. 2
   nounobsolete

   Plural of defy.

   Note

   A plural that now lives mostly in historical writing, because the noun itself, meaning a challenge, is obsolete. Its spelling follows the regular rule for a consonant plus y: the y becomes i before -es. That rule also gives the everyday verb form its identical spelling. In modern prose, challenges does this job; defies as a noun belongs to knights, heralds and formal declarations of hostility.

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