defy

Object

• categorisation: His voice, with its extremely distinctive dark, rich timbre at any rate rather defies categorisation.
• gravity: Cause a regular pencil to defy gravity by clinging to your fingers!
• categorization: Sometimes a magazine, book - or even web site - defies neat categorization... of their content shall you know them.
• logic: The thought of them being given knives defies logic.
• classification: Like all great works of literature, the Lord of the Rings defies classification.
• comprehension: Part 1 Geological evidence points to an cataclysmic event that almost defies comprehension.

Used with why or when

what: The recovery from the 1991 recession, for instance, seemed to defy what was universally taught in economics courses around the world.

Adjective complement

• more: Home with friends the world defying more than quot the discovery.
• easy: The character's motivations are complex and defy easy categorizing.
• most: The Columbia defies most of the rules of modern hotel management.

Modifying Another Word

• openly: They intend to openly defy the law in order to get arrested.
• almost: The third movement almost defied gravity - a dream that had become slumber.
• seemingly: No effect compares to having an ordinary, everyday object seemingly defy gravity.
• deliberately: He wasn't satisfied, v10 tells us, with a campaign of malicious gossip about John but deliberately defied him.
• apparently: As Nationwide moved into the 1980s, Bob Wellings ( above left, apparently defying gravity in his series Peaks of Britain!
• successfully: It popularized the idea that unjust laws can be successfully defied.

Present participle complement

• age: There are many hundreds of qigong postures designed to help defy aging.
• categorize: Other things we might make or commission ourselves that really defy categorizing... .