make against

make against

English

Verb

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

1. (now rare) To be unfavourable to; to work against. [from 16th c.]
   • 1662 Thomas Salusbury, Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Dialogue 2):

     If the Authour will but persist in his assumption, the consequence shall make directly against him.

   • 1779, Joshua Reynolds, in John Ingamells, John Edgcumbe (eds.), The Letters of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Yale 2000, p. 83:

     The neglect of not answering your obliging letter wrote soon after your arrival at Calcutta, I confess makes very bad against me, but the truth is that I could give no other answer to what you mentioned concerning your Nephew than that it was not in my power to serve him […] .

   • 1819, Abraham Rees (ed.), The Cyclopaedia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature, Volume 34 ("Stone"):

     And as there is no argument so good, but that being carried too far it will make against its purpose […] .

   • 1823 Joshua Nichols Glenn, Diary (Saturday 7 June 1823):

     I must take more exercise than I have done for time past—it will make against my Studies but it is better to have health to preach what I now know ... than to know more and not be able to preach at all.

References

• “make against”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, →ISBN.