self-defense skill
1
3.5
- noun
- /sɛlf dɪˈfɛns skɪl/
- US
:
habilidad de defensa personal
- I'd spent years developing the self-defense skills that allowed me to feel safe even in dangerous places, and in one night I'd discovered an appalling vulnerability.
Examples
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Learning martial arts can greatly enhance your self-defense skill and build your confidence.
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Let's just hope her self-defense skills are better than her secretarial skills.
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"By adopting cautious habits, you may sharply decrease the chances of finding yourself in a situation in which your self-defense skills are challenged.
Fiction book (2000) -
I started my freshman year in high school, which works to equip girls with self-defense skills to get themselves out of a rape or abduction situation.
Blog text (19) -
She took a class to improve her self-defense skill in case she ever faced a threat on the street.
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Practicing with a partner allows you to develop important self-defense skills for real-life situations.
Antonyms
How Skilled
Surface Forms
Morphology
self-defense + skill
The phrase is directly compositional: 'self-defense' literally denotes defending oneself and 'skill' means an ability gained through practice, so a B1 learner who knows those words can derive 'ability to protect oneself'. This noun-noun combination follows a transparent, cross-linguistically common pattern and requires no idiomatic knowledge or metaphorical shift.
Etymology
Self-defense skill comes from the idea of learning simple moves to stop an attack. Self means your own, defense means protecting, and skill means a learned ability, so the phrase refers to 'the ability to protect oneself'.