Word.ws English Dictionary

gainstrive

gainstrive verb: to strive against; to resist, oppose.

Verb

gainstrive (third-person singular simple present gainstrives, present participle gainstriving, simple past gainstrived or gainstrove, past participle gainstrived or gainstrove or gainstriven)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To strive against; to resist, oppose.
  2. (intransitive, 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

Forms of gainstrive

third-person singular presentgainstrives
present participlegainstriving
pastgainstrived
pastgainstrove
past participlegainstrived
past participlegainstrove
past participlegainstriven

Origin of gainstrive

From gain- + strive.

Words formed from gainstrive

Questions about gainstrive

What does gainstrive mean?
Gainstrive means to strive against; to resist, oppose.
What part of speech is gainstrive?
Gainstrive is a verb.
What is the past tense of gainstrive?
The past tense of gainstrive is gainstrived.

Words near gainstrive in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gainstrive (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.

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