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Course: 6th grade reading and vocabulary (improved and expanded) > Unit 1
Lesson 3: Making inferencesDefiant | Vocabulary
Let’s explore the meaning and origin of the word “defiant”. Created by David Rheinstrom.
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Video transcript
- [David] To arms, wordsmiths! This video is about the word defiant. De-fi-ant. It's an adjective. This word means openly disobeying rules, pushing back against authority. This word comes to us from
French and ultimately Latin, a late Latin verb, disfidare, which means to renounce, to go back on one's faith. Fidus is Latin for faith or
trust and dis means not or away. So with that in mind, what
are some English words that you can think of that
contain those elements? Dis or fid? You're probably wondering
about dis and de, those are different sounds. They mean the exact same thing in Latin, they both mean not or away. I'll give you 10 seconds to think, and then show you what I came up with. Here we go. (instructor snaps fingers)
(futuristic upbeat music) Here's some of mine. Dislike, right? Not liking something. Fidelity, which is like
faithfulness or loyalty, and confidence, which is like
saying you trust yourself. You have faith in yourself. Let's use it in a sentence or two. In fact, let me show you a
couple of forms of this word 'cause you can use it as
a verb, as defy or defies as in Luella defied her
father and snuck out at night. And then when we turn it
back into an adjective by adding that A-N-T ending,
we get defiant again. Plumeria Goodheart was defiant. She would never give
in to Lady Mordigaunt. Little hobbit-y woman over
her, brimming with goodness, big evil sorceress over here,
crackling with lightning. "Feel my wrath!" "I'll never join you,"
et cetera, et cetera. You get the picture. To be defiant is to be bold,
audacious, rebellious, unruly. A defiant person openly flouts
rules and fights authority. So when you wanna turn that
adjective defiant into a noun, you turn the A-N-T into A-N-C-E. Defiant becomes defiance. That's how you talk about it as a noun. Let me use it in a sentence. The rebels showed their
defiance through performances of forbidden dance. The most forbidden dance
of all is the dance of neurons blazing through your mind as they make new connections. Sparks flying in the deepness of your mind as your brain becomes a
bright shimmering beacon of knowledge. The rumba of rumination,
the bachata of brilliance, the lambada of learning. You can learn anything, David out.