"defeat the purpose" meaning in English

See defeat the purpose in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: defeats the purpose [present, singular, third-person], defeating the purpose [participle, present], defeated the purpose [participle, past], defeated the purpose [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} defeat the purpose (third-person singular simple present defeats the purpose, present participle defeating the purpose, simple past and past participle defeated the purpose)
  1. To undermine the act of doing something by having an opposite effect; to nullify.
    Sense id: en-defeat_the_purpose-en-verb-d9hKMJ7s Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Download JSON data for defeat the purpose meaning in English (1.0kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "defeats the purpose",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "defeating the purpose",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "defeated the purpose",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "defeated the purpose",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "defeat the purpose (third-person singular simple present defeats the purpose, present participle defeating the purpose, simple past and past participle defeated the purpose)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To undermine the act of doing something by having an opposite effect; to nullify."
      ],
      "id": "en-defeat_the_purpose-en-verb-d9hKMJ7s",
      "links": [
        [
          "undermine",
          "undermine"
        ],
        [
          "opposite",
          "opposite"
        ],
        [
          "effect",
          "effect"
        ],
        [
          "nullify",
          "nullify"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "defeat the purpose"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "defeats the purpose",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "defeating the purpose",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "defeated the purpose",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "defeated the purpose",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "defeat the purpose (third-person singular simple present defeats the purpose, present participle defeating the purpose, simple past and past participle defeated the purpose)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To undermine the act of doing something by having an opposite effect; to nullify."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "undermine",
          "undermine"
        ],
        [
          "opposite",
          "opposite"
        ],
        [
          "effect",
          "effect"
        ],
        [
          "nullify",
          "nullify"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "defeat the purpose"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.