gainstrive
verbEtymology From gain- + strive.
1
Obsolete To strive against; to resist, oppose.
2
Obsolete To resist; to fight back.
- 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.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book IV, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- Derived terms
- gainstriving
- Related terms
- gainstrife