Preposition: of

• gravity: Chen turned and threw himself up the cliff, his will to live in defiance of gravity and any thoughts of the dragon.

• logic: In defiance of all logic and commonsense, Britain is going to spend £ 7.4 million on examining the health risks of mobile phones.

• ban: In the 1980s workers began to stir in defiance of the ban on strikes.

• law: Do they live in defiance of the laws of Nature?

• resolution: Due to his defiance of UN resolutions, many more soldiers have been put in harms way.

• convention: Prisoners are being paraded in defiance of all international conventions.

Converse of object

• bid: In every country there is an upland or outfield territory, which will always bid defiance to agriculture.

• show: The conference showed defiance by voting in favor of linking the basic pensions with average earnings.

• continue: If I had been in their shoes and someone else had been in mine, I would have voted to continue the defiance.

• choose: We've shown that for regimes that choose defiance, there are serious consequences.

• shout: Martin McGuinness - his chief co-conspirator - has been shouting defiance on television North and South at democratic politicians.

• give: Teeth, bones, and hair, give the most lasting defiance to corruption.

Preposition: in

• face: This marks an all round bloody success story and proves that defiance in the face of the bastard bailiff can succeed.

Adjective modifier

• wilful: We have a right to expect that sentences will reflect the damage done to our social fabric by wilful defiance of the law.

• deliberate: His paintings, with their unexpected juxtaposition of objects, are a deliberate defiance of common sense.

• apparent: It does this in virtue of a higher Law and in apparent defiance of the lower.

• continued: Bush may well see this continued defiance by the people of Falluja as something that needs to be crushed.

• open: The Boston Tea Party was an act of open defiance against the British state, at that time the most powerful in the world.

• direct: It was to live in direct defiance of the command of the Word of God.

Noun used with modifier

• bid: In the poem of 1711, the bard bids defiance to " Mars.