withsay
English edit
Etymology edit
From Middle English withseien, from Old English wiþseċġan (“to speak against; to denounce, renounce, or deny”), corresponding to with- + say. Cognate with Old Saxon witharseggian (“to object”), Low German wedderseggen (“to renounce”), German widersagen (“to renounce”), Dutch wederzeggen and weerzeggen.
Verb edit
withsay (third-person singular simple present withsays, present participle withsaying, simple past and past participle withsaid)
- (archaic or obsolete, transitive) To speak against someone or something.
- To contradict or deny.
- 1530, John Palsgrave, Lesclarcissement, 783/2:
- To gainsay, to oppose in speech (and by extension writing).
- 1922 February, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:
- Let the lewd with faith and fervour worship. With will will we withstand, withsay.
- To forbid, to refuse to allow, give, or permit.
- To decline, to refuse to do or accept.
- c. 1670, ordinance in Collection of Ordinances of the Royal Household - 1327–1694 (1790), 372:
- 1900 (original version 1260), Jacobus (de Voragine), William Caxton, Frederick Startridge Ellis, The Golden Legend, Or, Lives of the Saints - Volume 4:
- I sent to them also martyrs, confessors, and doctors, and they accorded not to them, ne to their doctrine, but because it appertaineth not to me to withsay thy request, I shall give to them my preachers, by whom they may be enlumined and made clean, or else I shall come against them myself if they will not amend them.
- 2000, James Farl Powers, Morte D'Urban:
- He was mild to good men of God and stark beyond all bounds to those who withsaid his will.
- To contradict or deny.