gainstrive
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Verb[edit]
gainstrive (third-person singular simple present gainstrives, present participle gainstriving, simple past gainstrived or gainstrove, past participle gainstrived or gainstriven)
- (obsolete, transitive) To strive against; to resist, oppose. [16th century]
- (obsolete, intransitive) To resist; to fight back. [16th century]
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- For on the spoile of women he doth live, / Whose bodies chast, when ever in his powre / He may them catch unable to gainstrive, / He with his shamefull lust doth first deflowre, / And afterwardes themselves doth cruelly devoure.