Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To ward off. Often used with off: fend off an attack.
- v. Archaic To defend.
- v. To make an effort to resist: fend against the cold.
- v. To attempt to manage without assistance: had to fend for ourselves until we were rescued.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To defend; protect; guard.
- To keep off; prevent from entering or impinging; ward off; forbid: usually followed by off: as, to fend off blows. Compare fen.
- To support; maintain.
- To act in opposition; offer resistance.
- To parry; fence.
- To make provision; give care.
- n. The shift which one makes for one's self, whether for sustenance or in any other respect; self-defense or self-support.
- n. A Middle English form of fiend.
Wiktionary
- n. An enemy; fiend; the Devil.
- v. intransitive To take care of oneself, to take responsibility for oneself.
- v. rare To defend, to take care of (typically construed with for); to block or push away (typically construed with off).
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete A fiend.
- v. To keep off; to prevent from entering or hitting; to ward off; to shut out; -- often with
off . - v. To act on the defensive, or in opposition; to resist; to parry; to shift off.
WordNet 3.0
- v. try to manage without help
- v. withstand the force of something
Etymologies
- From Middle English fenden ("defend, fight, prevent"), shortening of defenden ("defend") (Wiktionary)
- Middle English fenden, short for defenden, to defend; see defend. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“And we were quite disturbed at the end of it, when we found that Rosario had actually put a false name on this note that he shoved in the baby ` s diaper and just left him the way that he did in this parking lot, and as you had mentioned, defenseless, to kind of fend for himself.”
“TIMONEY: Well, that's a-- my understanding is, and I don't know too much about that case, but my understanding was this young 15-year - old may have been bullied in school and brought it with him to school just to kind of fend off bullies.”
“This is not an intended strike (but) Weyman has adopted a technique with his fend which is highly reckless," Kite argued.”
“Let's face it," Warren said, "This is sort of how we went about the rescue -- we rescued at the top and we left the bottom to kind of fend for itself -- and that's showing up in the unemployment numbers.”
“Instead, religions have had to fend for themselves in attracting, and retaining, members.”
“There is another group who think that the best solution is to do away with all these pensions and let those people fend for themselves.”
“America needs more senators like Byrd to fend off the Greedy Old Party (GOP) of NEVER.”
“It's nice," says Mr. Fickster, standing beside the tree, now wrapped in wire to fend off fresh baboon attacks.”
The Wall Street Journal: Orchard Venture Taps Baboons' Secret
“After Wall Street received a trillion-dollar rescue from Treasury and the Fed, they were left alone to fend for themselves.”
“She had suffered extensive damage to her trachea and jaw, broken ribs, and internal injuries and had lost two fingers from her right hand trying to fend off the wolf.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘fend’.
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Fight scene words
Great words to teach you how to write a fight scene - and for those writers who want to get the old gears of the mind cranking, here's a few fight scene tips to get you started - this is NOT by me,...
Slam, Sidestep, Evade, Roundhouse, Momentum, Counter, Clip, Feeding Frenzy, Advance, Cuff, Ambush, Nimbly and 261 more...
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Deprefixed words
A list of words you more frequently hear used with prefixes than without.
clement, witting, ravel, whelm, fettered, licit, couth, bridled, wieldy, kempt, ingenuous, iterate and 116 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2057 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, F
felony, frolic, fend, fuselage, farthingale, freewheeling, frigorific, flummery, fancypants, felsitic, flagstone, flageolet and 295 more...
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eesome
Includes any intangible conceivable independently of Hom. Sap.
depthless, overspire, unsteady, thitherward, rile, munchable, covet, pastinaceous, mirtle, slonk, tink, inerrarable and 345 more...
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Revised GRE Wordlist_2013
Vocabulary building for my quest of GRE 2013
ephemeral, esoteric, rhetoric, censure, egregious, pittance, dupe, mulct, paucity, alacrity, maintain, laconic and 1008 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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GRE uncommon
patronage, expletive, exhort, exegesis, execrable, excommunicate, evince, escarpment, ersatz, ergo, epoxy, snare and 1202 more...
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ooh shiny
words I like with little or no rationalization
weir, siphon, lossy, mayhem, eruct, helix, candela, murther, fend, axial, feverfew, ventral and 68 more...
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Random list 22/5/2010
Every word I random for the next ten minutes or so will be added to this list.
venturine, tortulous, tweedle, appellatively, vetch, misexplication, intrigante, corresponsive, polyphonic, ramrod, yank, tuscor and 31 more...
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Worldist
huzzah, foo, bar, unfuggled, celerity, tinny, tall pole in the ..., anathema, eel's broth, how come, whole nuther, roughhouse and 52 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for fend.
thtownse Forfend - interesting word, but I would not call it common. The four examples in Wordnik have it part of the "Heaven Forfend" expression or a variant thereof. May 6, 2010
hernesheir Latin fendere to strike. Sometimes offense is the best defense. See also definitions and uses of forfend. May 6, 2010
thtownse I was thinking about this word today - to me it is pretty interesting because in its atomic form it only exists in common usage as part of two idiomatic expressions ("Fend for yourself", "Fend off an attack"). Can anyone think of any more? It also lives as the core of the words "offend" and "defend", and the only other one I can think of is "fender". It sounds like it has a relationship with "fence". May 6, 2010
fbharjo de-fend, of-fend Mar 30, 2009