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Common collocations with defy in American Collocation

defy verb transitive

US /dɪˈfaɪ/

openly or deliberately

blatantly
deliberately
openly
publicly

Workers in several unions openly defied their leaders by taking strike action.

repeatedly

continually
repeatedly

He argued that mothers who repeatedly defied court rulings on access should be jailed.

successfully

successfully

People began to believe that unjust laws could be successfully defied.

belief
categorization
classification
comprehension
definition
description
expectation
explanation
imagination
logic

Their claims defy belief.