A shortened, poetic form of 'against'; used in poetry and old literature to mean in opposition to.
A contraction of 'against,' formed by dropping the initial 'a-' and shortening the word for metrical purposes in verse. This contraction was especially common in Middle English and Early Modern English poetry.
'Gainst appears constantly in Shakespeare and earlier poetry—poets used it to make lines fit the meter! It's the same reason we still write "'twas" instead of "it was"—the apostrophe shows a letter was dropped for poetic flow.
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