What is "gainsay"

Usage examples of "gainsay".

He looked to his two brothers to gainsay Cluff Drybannock, but both men held their tongues.

Softly, impalpably, with both the graciousness of a host and the determinedness of an intruder who will not be gainsaid, the first rays of morning light filtered into the mist.

I admit it all, and your gainsaying it, though it be so well meant, cannot change my mind.

As Great Smash was an oracle in her own set, there was no gainsaying her dogmas, and Pliny the elder was obliged to succumb.

Cot was, these vague stories of horror worked as well as any wall, gainsaying any attempt to leave.

Whatever the reason, there is no gainsaying the growth of fellow-feeling and of a curiosity founded on friendly interest,--both of which are revealed far more abundantly in our later literatures than in the earlier classics.

But it must be admitted that if Bernard really thought at present that he had better leave Baden, the observation I have just quoted was not so much a sign of this conviction as of the hope that his companion would proceed to gainsay it.

Aurelia exerted that formidable strength of hers and demonstrated to Lucius Decumius that she was not to be gainsaid, he solved his quandary by moving his protection business to the outer Sacra Via and the Vicus Fabricii, where the local colleges were lacking in such enterprise.

I ceased striving against him, and I went with him to Sunway, which is no great way from the Castle of Abundance, and there befell that treason of Walter the Black, who loved me and prayed for my love, and when I gainsaid him, swore by all that was holy, before my lord, that it was I who sought his love, and how I had told and taught him ways of witchcraft, whereby we might fulfill our love, so that the Baron should keep a wife for another man.

As befitted a paxman, Orain kept close to Dom Carlo, but as they were spreading their blankets, and Romilly checking the birds and feeding them the last of the carrion - the men grumbled and snarled about the smell, but no one would gainsay Dom Carlo.

Well and come back whole and safe, I know not why thou shouldest not go straight to Utterbol and have the damsel away with thee, whosoever gainsay it.

Taran could not gainsay the words of the cantrev lord, for Cornillo shone as if she had been polished and her short, curving horns sparkled in the sun.

Mabel Dunham is willing to overlook all my imperfections and ignorances like, I should be wrong to gainsay it, on account of any sartainty I may have myself about my own want of merit.

The equerries, the grooms, the ostlers—they will not gainsay the daughter of Lord Voltasus.

But he was one of your wrath-of-God tyrants who won't be gainsaid, and quoted Queen's Regulations, and bullied me about Duty and Honour - and I was young then, and fagged out with tupping Ranavalona, and easily cowed.