make head against

English

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)

(transitive, obsolete) To attack or take up arms against (someone).
- 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 Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:
  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.
- 1740, William Oldys, The Life of Sir Walter Ralegh‎^[1], London, page 28:
  The next, whose Fate drew on, was Sir James Desmond, who, on the Fourth of August in the above mentioned Year, having made an Inroad upon Muskerry, and taken a great Booty from Sir Cormac Mac Teige, Sheriff of Cork; the said Sheriff making Head against him, recover’d the Booty, wounded Sir James mortally, and took him Prisoner.
- 1896, Joseph Conrad, chapter II, in An Outcast of the Islands, London: T. Fisher Unwin […], →OCLC, part III, page 181:
  When I tried to put some heart into him, telling him he had four big guns—you know the brass six-pounders you left here last year—and that I would get powder, and that, perhaps, together we could make head against Lakamba, he simply howled at me.
(figuratively) To resist, oppose.
- 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,^[2]
  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 […]
- 1715, Richard Bulstrode, “Of Religion”, in Miscellaneous Essays‎^[3], London: Jonas Browne, page 307:
  […] if Children were early instructed, Knowledge would insensibly insinuate it self before their Years had arm’d them with Obstinacy enough to make Head against it.
- 1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, chapter XXIII, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC:
  [I]f he began to brood over their miseries instead of trying to make head against them there could be little doubt that such a state of mind would powerfully assist the influence of the pestilent climate.
- 1962, Aldous Huxley, chapter 15, in Island‎^[4], London: Chatto & Windus, page 280:
  There was strength enough, he could see, in that small frame to make head against any suffering; a will that would be more than a match for all the swords that fate might stab her with.