Word.ws English Dictionary

gainstrife

gainstrife noun: contention; striving against.

Noun

gainstrife (uncountable)

  1. (archaic) Contention; striving against.
    • He had come to see Ralph, but my lady took him off to one of the solars, and said briskly: 'Now, I charge you, John, no prating to my lord about all this gainstrife that is sprung up over my brother Somerset's ending, for he is nigh diswitted already by the debate, and he will not for his life mell...1975, Georgette Heyer, My Lord John

Origin of gainstrife

From gain- + strife. Compare gainstrive.

Questions about gainstrife

What does gainstrife mean?
Gainstrife means contention; striving against.
What part of speech is gainstrife?
Gainstrife is a noun.

Words near gainstrife in the dictionary

  1. gainstay
  2. gainstayed
  3. gainstaying
  4. gainstays
  5. gainstood
  6. gainstrife
  7. gainstrive
  8. gainstrived
  9. gainstriven
  10. gainstrives
  11. gainstriving

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gainstrife (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “gainstrife.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gainstrife. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.