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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Defensively

Defensively \De*fen"sive*ly\, adv. On the defensive.

Wiktionary
defensively

adv. In a defensive manner. alt. In a defensive manner.

WordNet
defensively
  1. adv. in an apologetic and self-defensive manner; "`I felt it better you should know,' said Sir Cedric defensively"

  2. in a defensive manner; "the general conviction that our side is in the right and acting defensively over what Russians call the German question and Americans the Berlin crisis" [ant: offensively]

Usage examples of "defensively".

Defensively, coordinator Ray Rhodes made a great move by switching cornerback Leroy Butler to strong safety, replacing retired veteran Mark Murphy.

Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, found that Americans use guns defensively 2.

Galen with eyes still sharp, a scrutinizing gaze that had kept the dwarves of Clan Battlehammer ducking defensively out of sight for many, many decades.

Spain too long to trust any native people, Memmius tightened his ranks up and marched defensively toward New Carthage, some thirty miles away to the southwest.

He raised his forelimbs defensively and swept them through the air as if waving away a cloud of gnats.

Either they oppose us, offensively or defensively, or the pacification-destruction of the nonliving war zone heats up the conflict that is still smoldering on the planet, and thereby we push them into total war.

Down below them on the ground, a group of teenagers kicked aimlessly at the rubbish that had fallen from a skip, their shoulders hunched defensively, defeatedly, Claudia recognised.

At once all oars were shipped, the bowman leaped onto the wharf and tied the boat to a bollard, marines followed rapidly in disciplined order and formed up defensively, guns ready, their Sergeant studying the terrain.

It was in the Apennine Mountains, and the Sicilians had had time to dig in defensively.

When Indra reached out to hold his hand again, he stiffened defensively in a way which said, without actually rejecting her, that he would prefer no such contact.

I know only too well, he said, defensively, that you may not believe me.

Mothers with small children, junior executives with oxford cloth sleeves rolled up, teenagers grouped defensively by the fountain, and the ubiquitous variety of buskers.

He stretched out his hands as he went, sweeping the ground, in hopes of encountering something that could be put to use defensively.

Simply being a scientist was to be a potential traitor, and it was perhaps understandable that they had reacted defensively and failed to welcome with open arms another apparent attempt to discredit established scientific knowledge—.

He saw defensively belligerent men and tastelessly dressed women—he saw mean, rancorous, suspicious faces that bore the one mark incompatible with a standard bearer of the intellect: the mark of uncertainty.