DEFEAT: DOES IT MEAN 'WIN' OR 'LOSE'?
Dear Dr English,
I wonder what the word " defeat" means; winning or losing. At the beginning, I understood that it means winning or elimination but in a computer game I have found that it means lose. I already looked it up in a dictionary, which gives both meanings. It makes me very confused. Please help clarify.
Khwanjai Jiaragsuwan
Your dictionary is right but you might not have read it properly. Defeat, as a verb, means to win a victory over someone or to beat them.
The Germans defeated the Thai team in the friendship match.
The Thai Rak Thai Party defeated the Democrats in the general election four years ago.
The above examples are in active voice, but in passive voice, the subject of the sentence "is defeated", meaning losing. In this case you need to swap the subject and the object to keep the same meaning.
The Thai team was defeated by the German team in the friendship match.
The Democrats were defeated by Thai Rak Thai in the general election four years ago.
When "defeat" is used as a noun, it means the state of being defeated, quite the opposite meaning from when it is a verb. I presume that the part of speech is the matter that causes you confusion.
The lack of equipment for practice contributed to the defeat of our team.
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WANT ARTICLES ABOUT KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Dear Dr English,
Could you please do me a favour? I am very interested in knowledge management. Can you please advise if you happen to know an institution for knowledge management in Bangkok where we can find articles in Thai language?
Supranee J.
This does not sound like a question about problems in English at all, but yes Ižll do you a favour.
I do not know which institution provides articles on the subject but Poo Chad Karn Weekly ran an article on competency management in their issue for 3-9 December, 2004. You can also try logging on to www.hrcenter.co.th .
Thanks to Khun Arporn Puvitayaphan, The HR manager for training of The Nation Publishing Group, for giving us this piece of information.
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