DEFILE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Defile

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noun

Defile n.

1.

Any narrow passage or gorge in which troops can march only in a file, or with a narrow front; a long, narrow pass between hills, rocks, etc.

2.

(Mil.) The act of defilading a fortress, or of raising the exterior works in order to protect the interior. See Defilade.

verb

Defile v. t. (Mil.) Same as Defilade.

Defile v. t.

1.

To make foul or impure; to make filthy; to dirty; to befoul; to pollute. "They that touch pitch will be defiled."

2.

To soil or sully; to tarnish, as reputation; to taint. "He is... among the greatest prelates of this age, however his character may be defiled by... dirty hands."

3.

To injure in purity of character; to corrupt. "Defile not yourselves with the idols of Egypt."

4.

To corrupt the chastity of; to debauch; to violate; to rape. "The husband murder'd and the wife defiled."

5.

To make ceremonially unclean; to pollute. "That which dieth of itself, or is torn with beasts, he shall not eat to defile therewith."

Defile v. i. (past & past part. defiled; pres. part. defiling) To march off in a line, file by file; to file off.

See images of 'Defile'

Etymology of 'Defile'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Defile" Quotes from Famous Books

... novelist stimulates your jaded palate by introducing a duel fought with butchers' knives by the light of lanterns. One genius subsists by murder, as another does by bigamy and adultery. Scott would have recoiled from the blood as well as from the ordure, he would have allowed neither to defile his noble page. He knew that there was no pretence for bringing before a reader what is merely horrible, that by doing so you only stimulate passions as low as licentiousness itself—the passions which were stimulated by ...

— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... know, for instance," asked Schill, indignantly, "why we lost the important defile of Koesen? In consequence of the night-sweat of General ...

— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach

... expedition as far as Bethlehem, and with so large a force that David and his few followers were shut up in their fortress—for how long we do not know—probably for some days. It was very dull and wearisome business, imprisoned in a rocky defile and unable to do anything, while the Philistines were stealing the harvests that grew on the very spot where he ...

— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... so many woes, had been sent on ahead, guarded by the first division, and if its own wagons, well horsed as for the most part they were, got over the ground at a satisfactory pace, the requisitioned vehicles, most of them empty, delayed the troops and produced sad confusion among the hills of the defile of Stonne. After leaving the hamlet of la Berliere the road rises more sharply between wooded hills on either side. Finally, about eight o'clock, the two remaining divisions got under way, when Marshal MacMahon came galloping up, vexed to find there those troops ...

— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... beech-woods of Itchkeria. Then began the fight. The hostile tribes of all the region round were up in arms, and waiting in the depths of the woods for the enemy. As his vanguard reached the first narrow and precipitous defile they were received by a murderous fire from behind numerous trunks of trees which, felled across the way, served as breast-works for the one party and obstacles to the progress of the other. Besides these barricades, the barriers no less difficult of removal, which were woven ...

— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

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