defensive
If we only play defensively, we won't be able to win.
Defensively, they are solid and they have got some fantastic players.
I thought they'd be better defensively but they lack discipline.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Answering & responding
acknowledgment
affirmatively
answer
answer the door
clap back
clapback
comeback
counter
counterattack
field
I take/plead the Fifth (Amendment)idiom
keep (someone/something) away
non-respondent
non-responder
non-response
non-responsive
rejoin
respondent
response
thank you

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Sports & games generally

defensively | American Dictionary

defensively
adverb
us/dɪˈfen·sɪv·li/
acting in a way that shows feelings of being criticized and the need to quickly explain :
When asked where she went, she answered defensively.

Examples of defensively

defensively
The city was intentionally designed defensively: its exterior wall does not bisect preexisting buildings, and there are gates on all sides of the city.
While these mechanisms enable people to program defensively in an ad-hoc manner, they are an inappropriate basis for designing, implementing, and composing program components.
Doctors are more inclined to behave defensively and "enforce" autonomy to reduce their own risk taking and responsibility.
Indeed, they may defensively turn away from awareness of others' experience, and from dwelling in their own or others' inner states.
Where it could be shown that the torturer did so defensively to save his or her own life, the normal defense of necessity should prevail.
While the technology diffuses, health policy is only in the position to react restrictively or defensively, rather than to be active.
Attachmentrelated information that, as a result of its (affective) content, does not fit the expectancies is defensively excluded.
Many mapping projects were (and are) instigated as a means of controlling (defensively or offensively) a parcel of land and its inhabitants.
If an event threatens to reduce the power of advantaged groups to control the agenda, these groups are likely to respond defensively to focusing events.
Unlike the common opinion, however, it is still uttered defensively and shows the signs of dispute in the prior social discourse.
In essence, ventral structures appear to monitor the expectation of further negative events, thus managing self-control defensively rather than opportunistically.
Some people were initially reluctant to make negative judgements about family members particularly their children or spoke defensively indicating an unwillingness to admit that their relatives were neglectful.
Bates argues that pre-modern societies, based on family networks, engage in the private provision of violence (defensively and aggressively) and that this is effective but inefficient.
Some of the theoretical and empirical work conducted to date suggests that women with unresolved loss may be defensively excluding threatening information about themselves and their relationships.
It is therefore not surprising that the traditional elite reacted defensively to prevent the breakdown of norms and accused those unable to resist temptation of heresy.
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These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.