gainstay

present singular third person gainstays · participle present gainstaying · participle past gainstayed · past gainstayed

1. transitiveTo stand against or in opposition to; resist; oppose.

   " [...] Then I dare not gainstay you, Devin. I just wish to bring out the best in such a noble son of Zenn-Ra."

   2004, William Hill, Wizard Sword

   2 more examples

   Among the diversity of opinions that are entertained in regard to physical resistance, there are but a few found to gainstay that stern delcaration.

   1983, Bill McAdoo, Pre-Civil War Black Nationalism

   But this stance informs the way I regard the student essays I surveyed earlier, my belief that however challenging I may be in provoking interpretations of Thoreau, I ought not to gainstay my students' own Thoreauvian productions, […]

   1998, Randall Roorda, Dramas of solitude: narratives of retreat in American nature writing

2. transitiveTo deny (the right to); deprive (of).

   An illiterate woman, Mai-ch'en's wife is not gainstayed the benefit of the doubt.

   1998, Nancy Ann Watanabe, Love eclipsed: Joyce Carol Oates's Faustian moral vision

   1 more example

   … it was intended to be, a living fire of force in the world that cannot be gainstayed and which no storms can shake.

   1926, Theosophical Society (Madras, India), The Theosophist