sniping from the sidelines

Silly me, I thought we were discussing words, not personality traits.

Anyway, the English verb defend comes from the Latin verb defendo, -ere, defendi, defensum 'to repell, guard, defend'. There's also a verb defenso 'to defend, protect' that is obviously derived from the past particple of defendo. Our noun, defence (alternate spelling defense) also comes from that past particple. I don't see that it's useful arguing about English spelling, but to each his own.