Word.ws English Dictionary

made head against

made head against is the simple past and past participle of make head against.

Meaning of make head against

Verb

make head against (third-person singular simple present makes head against, present participle making head against, simple past and past participle made head against)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To attack or take up arms against (someone).
    • Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head / Against my power; thrice from the banks of Wye / And sandy-bottom'd Severn have I sent him / Bootless home and weather-beaten back.c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
  2. (figuratively) To resist, oppose.
    • Such is then this gallaunt and holie confidence of the spouse to braue her enemies, in whose person the Apostle speaking, wee see […] how hee beareth downe euerie high thing which presumeth to make head against God […]1600, Thomas Walkington (attributed), An Exposition of the Two First Verses of the Sixt Chapter to the Hebrewes in Forme of a Dialogue, London: Thomas Man, Sermon 26, p. 348

Questions about made head against

What is made head against the simple past and past participle of?
Made head against is the simple past and past participle of make head against.

Words near made head against in the dictionary

  1. made hard work of
  2. made haste
  3. made haste slowly
  4. made hay
  5. made hay while the sun shone
  6. made head against
  7. made head or tail of
  8. made headway
  9. made heavy going of
  10. made heavy weather
  11. made heavy weather of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: made head against (page history and authors); make head against (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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