DEFEAT - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

DEFEATAuthored

The Law Mind • 967 words

Definition

To defeat, in legal usage, carries three related but distinct meanings depending on context:

To annul, undo, or terminate. An estate, title, interest, or right is defeated when a subsequent event — typically a condition subsequent or a defeasance — extinguishes it. A mortgage is defeated by repayment; a fee simple subject to condition is defeated by breach.

To prevent, frustrate, or circumvent. Used most often in the context of creditors' rights, as in statutes prohibiting transfers made to "hinder, delay, or defeat creditors." Here defeat means to thwart the legal expectations or remedies of another party.

To overcome or prevail against in a proceeding. The "defeated party" in litigation is the party against whom judgment is rendered.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): To overcome in battle or contest; to reduce to nothing the strength of; to nullify; to prevent something from being achieved.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To render null and void, as a title; to frustrate, as hope; to deprive of an estate. Also, older usage: to undo or disfigure (now obsolete).

The common meaning centers on winning against an opponent — a contest decided by force or competition. The primary legal meaning is narrower and more technical: the annulment or termination of a property right or legal interest by operation of law or contract. A title is not "beaten" — it is defeated, meaning legally extinguished. Researchers who carry the competitive connotation into property and conveyancing contexts will misread the operative effect being described.

Common Confusion

DEFEAT is closely associated with DEFEASANCE and DEFEASIBLE, and historical sources frequently cross-reference all three without distinguishing them clearly. Defeat is the verb; defeasance is the instrument or clause that accomplishes the defeat; defeasible describes the quality of an interest subject to being defeated. In older conveyancing literature, "defeat" often implies the existence of a prior defeasance instrument — the two concepts were structurally linked in early mortgage practice. Modern sources have largely separated them, using "defeat" more loosely as a general term for extinguishment.

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers will encounter "defeat" in three largely separate doctrinal streams, and conflating them produces analytical errors.

In property and conveyancing sources, defeat is the operative word for extinguishment of estates and interests. Pre-twentieth-century materials on mortgages, fee simple defeasible, and condition subsequent use defeat in this technical sense constantly. The Anderson entry makes the connection explicit: defeasance instruments were the mechanism by which defeat was accomplished. Researchers tracing the history of mortgage law or future interests must read defeat as a term of art describing legal extinguishment, not mere setback.

In creditors' rights and fraudulent transfer law, defeat appears in statutory language of long standing — "hinder, delay, or defeat creditors" — and the cases cited in Black's 2nd Ed. (Coleman v. Walker, Walker v. Sayers) illustrate that courts treated defeat in this phrase as the most complete form of obstruction: not just delay, but total frustration of the creditor's remedy. Researchers analyzing fraudulent conveyance statutes should note that defeat, hinder, and delay are listed in the alternative, and that defeat is the terminus of a spectrum.

In procedural and litigation contexts, "defeated party" is largely self-explanatory but matters for costs, appeals, and fee-shifting provisions. Historical sources are consistent here and present few traps.

Cross-corpus navigation note: Because Black's 1st Ed. entries simply redirect to DEFEASANCE, researchers using early editions will not find substantive treatment of defeat as a standalone concept. The fuller treatment in Black's 2nd Ed. is the more useful starting point. Rapalje & Lawrence similarly dispatches the term to defeasance while noting the creditor-frustration usage parenthetically.

Historical Dictionary Support

The historical sources present an unusual cross-referencing structure: Black's 1st Ed. and Rapalje & Lawrence both route the reader to DEFEASANCE rather than defining defeat independently, which reflects the older view that defeat was not a free-standing legal concept but an effect produced by a defeasance instrument. Black's 2nd Ed. breaks from this pattern and provides a direct, tripartite definition — a meaningful editorial development that tracks the growing use of "defeat" outside conveyancing contexts.

Anderson's entry is instructive because it captures the historical link between defeat and mortgage practice: the mortgagor would enfeoff the mortgagee, who simultaneously executed a defeasance, and the estate would be defeated upon repayment. This structural dependence between the conveyance and the defeasance explains why early dictionaries treated defeat as a derivative concept rather than a primary one.

Webster's 1913 is notably aligned with the legal sense in one respect — it includes "to render null and void, as a title" — suggesting that by the nineteenth century the property law meaning had penetrated into general educated usage. The older sense of defeat as physical destruction or disfigurement (the Shakespearean usage Webster flags as obsolete) had fully receded from legal discourse by the period covered by the historical dictionaries in this corpus.

No historical source adequately covers defeat in the litigation context as a term affecting costs or appellate rights — researchers will need to look to procedural treatises rather than these dictionaries for that usage.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Defeasance; Fraudulent Conveyance; Estates in Land

DEFEATcrossref

Black's Law Dictionary • 1891

See DEFEASANCE.

DEFEATmain

Rapalje & Lawrence • 1888

- See DEFEASANCE. the suit. The modes of defence are four, viz.: (1) by demurrer, by which the defendant demands the judgment of the DEFEAT-HINDER, (creditors, what is). 5 court, whether he should be compelled Bush (Ky.) 579. DEFECT.-Deficiency; insufficiency; the absence of something required by law. In pleading, defects in matters of form only, are cured by verdict (see AID, 82), but defects in matters of substance are fatal, as they directly affect the right to recover. DEFECT OF PARTIES DEFENDANT, (what is not). 40 Wis. 373, 375. DEFECT OR WANT OF REPAIR, (in a statute). 13 Gray (Mass.) 59, 63.

DEFEATmain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

time with another conveyance, containing conditions upon the performance of which the estate created may be "defeated" or totally undone.1 A bond for a reconveyance upon the payment of a specific sum, at a specified time, made at the same time and of the same date as a deed of conveyance.2 Formerly, every mortgagor enfeoffed the mortgagee who simultaneously executed a deed of defeasance, considered a part of the mortgage, whereby the feoffment was rendered void on repayment of the money at a certain day. But things that were merely executory, or to be completed by matters subsequent, could always be recalled by defeasances made subsequent to the time of their creation.1 It is not of the essence of a mortgage that there should be a defeasance; and there may be a defeasance of a deed of conveyance without constituting it a mortgage. The essence of a defeasance is to defeat the principal deed and make it void ab initio, if the condition be performed.3 A defeasance made subsequently to an executed contract must be part of the original transaction. At law, the instrument must be of as high a nature as the principal deed. Defeasances of deeds conveying realty are subject to the same rules as such deeds themselves, as to record and notice to purchasers; but in some States notice of the existence of a defeasance, to be binding, must be derived from the public records. When an absolute deed is shown to have been originally made as security for a loan of money, a court of equity will treat it as a mortgage, and allow the grantor to redeem the estate, on the ground that the defeasance was omitted from the deed by fraud or mistake.. But to reduce a conveyance to a mortgage the defeasance may be required by statute to be in writing, duly acknowledged and recorded.. 2. A defeasance to a bond, recognizance, or judgment recovered is a condition which, when performed, defeats or undoes it, in the same manner as a defeasance to an estate. The "condition" of a bond is always inserted in the bond or deed itself; a "defeasance" is made by a separate, and frequently by a subsequent, deed. This, like the condition of a bond, when performed, disincumbers the obligor's estate. See CONDITION. See DEFEASANCE; CONDITION. 1 [2 Bl. Com. 327. 2 [Butman v. James, 34 Minn. 550 (1885), Berry, J.; 4 Pick. 352. 3 Flagg v. Mann, 2 Sumn. 540 (1837), Story, J. See 21 Ala. 9; 3 Mich. 482; 7 Watts, 261, 401; 13 Mass. 443; 40 Me. 381; 43 id. 206; 14 Wend. 63; 17 S. & R. 70; 2 Washb. R. P. 489. $2 Kent, 142; Butman v. James, 34 Minn. 550 (1886). See Penn. Act 8 June, 1881; Mich. R. S. 261; Minn. St. L., 1873, 34, § 23. 12 Bl. Com. 342; 43 Me. 371; 14 N. J. L. 364.

DEFEATv.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

To undo; to disfigure; to destroy. [Obs.] His unkindness may defeat my life. Shak. To render null and void, as a title; to frustrate, as hope; to deprive, as of an estate. He finds himself naturally to dread a superior Being that can defeat all his designs, and disappoint all his hopes. Tillotson. The escheators . . . defeated the right heir of his succession. Hallam. In one instance he defeated his own purpose. A. W. Ward. To overcome or vanquish, as an army; to check, disperse, or ruin by victory; to overthrow. To resist with success; as, to defeat an assault. Sharp reasons to defeat the law. Shak.

DEFEATn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

An undoing or annulling; destruction. [Obs.] Upon whose property and most dear life A damned defeat was made. Shak. Frustration by rendering null and void, or by prevention of success; as, the defeat of a plan or design. An overthrow, as of an army in battle; loss of a battle; repulse suffered; discomfiture; -- opposed to victory.

defeatverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
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To overcome in battle or contest. | To reduce, to nothing, the strength of. | To nullify | To prevent (something) from being achieved.

defeatnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

The act or instance of being defeated, of being overcome or vanquished; a loss. | The act or instance of defeating, of overcoming, vanquishing. | Frustration (by prevention of success), stymieing; (law) nullification. | Destruction, ruin.

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