___ against (have effect)

Usage examples of militate.

But the use of animal flesh and fermented liquors directly militates with this equality of the rights of man.

And in Fimbria there was some kind of mind-set which seemed to militate against our folk from the earliest times.

But, what also militates greatly against the presumption that either revenge or an abnormal predisposition to cruelty could have animated Winder, is that the possession of any two such mental traits so strongly marked would presuppose a corresponding activity of other intellectual faculties, which was not true of him, as from all I can learn of him his mind was in no respect extraordinary.

Injury can destroy the career of a judoka, and the conventions that militated against physical damage did not seem to be operative with Diago.

Maybe the very success of the arthropod Bauplan militates against them ever evolving into forms suitable of filling the ecological niche of large terrestrial life forms.

To this cause may be added another, also mentioned by Lord Bacon -- a misdirected zeal in matters of religion, which induces so many to decry a newly-discovered truth, because the Divine records contain no allusion to it, or because, at first sight, it appears to militate, not against religion, but against some obscure passage which has never been fairly interpreted.

And although, according to this rule, the ceremonies and legal procedures of the Old Testament are not now observed, since they are to be understood figuratively, whereas the truth is made known in the New Testament, yet the carrying out of the Sacrament or of Relics to still a storm does not seem to militate against this rule.

And he reasons thus: that the sin of man proceeds from free-will, but the devil cannot destroy free-will, for this would militate against liberty: therefore the devil cannot be the cause of that or any other sin.

Also, of course, after a certain level, perpetual war may militate against technological progress.

He's the central figure -- it's his relationship with Lily that fuels the plot, and all the other characters are linked by their friendship with him -- but Denton gives us chapters from every other significant character's point of view as well, and this tends to militate against the kind of exaggerated humor of Bellwether.

Reasons of prudence, or the interest of other people, may militate against actually exacting it.

He had almost started to tiptoe down the stairs again when it occurred to him that too scrupulous a regard for his own honour in this instance might militate against his being able to rescue Amanda.

Widespread Economic Independence will of course militate against such a trend.

This would militate against making the contest a respected annual event.

For if it happened that an individual, even when asleep, had some very distinct idea, as, for example, if a geometer should discover some new demonstration, the circumstance of his being asleep would not militate against its truth.