countervail

present singular third person countervails · participle present countervailing · participle past countervailed · past countervailed

1. obsoleteTo have the same value or number as.

   Nay could their numbers counteruaile the ſtars Or [euer] driſling drops of April ſhowers, Or withered leaues that Autume ſhaketh down, Yet would the Souldane by his conquering power: So ſcatter and conſume them in his rage, That not a man ſhal liue to rue their fall.

   c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act IIII, scene i

2. To counter, counteract, counterbalance, neutralize, or negate.

   It cannot counteruaile the exchange of joy / That one ſhort minute giues me in her ſight:

   c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene vi], page 63, column 2

   2 more examples

   […] should I find thine ear closed and thy heart hardened, what hope for myself could countervail the despair for thee?

   1834, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], chapter II, in The Last Days of Pompeii. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […]; successor to Henry Colburn, →OCLC, book IV, page 209

   When justice stops being effective (or when crimes of corruption stop being punished) and when political vio­lence is no longer a threat, there is nothing left to cause fear in those who govern shamelessly, that is, buoyed by a mood they aren’t in control of and that no one is on hand to countervail.

   2020 February 8, Patrick Boucheron, “'Real power is fear': what Machiavelli tells us about Trump in 2020”, in The Guardian

3. To compensate for.

   countervail a very confiderable Advantage to all Men of Letters

   c. 1700, Roger L'Estrange, Seneca's Morals

   2 more examples

   I am one of those who thinke their fruit can no way countervaile this losse.

   1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 38, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book I, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC

   If [Wilfred] Owen preserves his youthful romanticism, or at least a shell of it, he uses it to countervail the horrifying scenes he describes, just as he poses his own youth against the age-old spectacle of men dying in pain and futility.

   1988, Richard Ellmann, The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, 2nd edition, New York: W.W. Norton, page 539