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To contradict; to deny; to controvert; to dispute; to forbid. I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist. Luke xxi. 15. The just gods gainsay That any drop thou borrow'dst from thy mother, My sacred aunt, should by my mortal sword Be drained. Shak.…

To boast; to be proud. God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Gal. vi. 14 No one . . . should glory in his prosperity. Richardson.

Of forbidding or fear-inspiring aspect; fierce; stern; surly; cruel; frightful; horrible. Whose grim aspect sets every joint a-shaking. Shak . The ridges of grim war. Milton.

Fierceness of look; sternness; crabbedness; forbiddingness.

of self-fertilization; -- said of hermaphrodite flowers in which some structural obstacle forbids autogamy.

In a manner that forbids alienation; as, rights inalienably vested.

p the ark. Gen. vii. 17. He must increase, but I must decrease. John iii. 30. The heavens forbid But that our loves and comforts should increase, Even as our days do grow! Shak.

rohibitorius Etym: [L.], or Prohibitory index (R. C. Ch.), a catalogue of books which are forbidden by the church to be read; the index expurgatorius Etym: [L.], or expurgatory index, is a catalogue of books from which passages marked as against faith or morals must be removed before Catholics can read them. These cata…

self; to gratify one's tastes or desires; esp., to give one's self up (to); to practice a forbidden or questionable act without restraint; -- followed by in, but formerly, also, by to. "Willing to indulge in easy vices." Johnson.

To forbid; to prohibit; to interdict. All men were inhibited, by proclamation, at the dissolution, so much as to mention a Parliament. Clarendon. Burial may not be inhibited or denied to any one. Ayliffe.

A writ from a higher court forbidding an inferior judge from further proceedings in a cause before; esp., a writ issuing from a higher ecclesiastical court to an inferior one, on appeal. Cowell.

To forbid; to prohibit or debar; as, to interdict intercourse with foreign nations. Charged not to touch the interdicted tree. Milton.

not being good when fresh. [Scot.] Kipper time, the season in which fishing for salmon is forbidden. [Eng. & Scot.]

a legal procedure; a legal claim; a legal trade; anything is legal which the laws do not forbid.

. Levitical degrees, degrees of relationship named in Leviticus, within which marriage is forbidden.

A person born of relations between whom marriage was forbidden by the Mosaic law; a bastard. Deut. xxiii. 2 (Douay version).

ms; as, mendicant friars. Mendicant orders (R. C. Ch.), certain monastic orders which are forbidden to acquire landed property and are required to be supported by alms, esp. the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Carmelites, and the Augustinians.

Moved by considerations of pay or profit; greedy of gain; sordid; selfish. Shak. For God forbid I should my papers blot With mercenary lines, with servile pen. Daniel.

A proposition by which something is denied or forbidden; a conception or term formed by prefixing the negative particle to one which is positive; an opposite or contradictory term or conception. This is a known rule in divinity, that there is no command that runs in negatives but couches under it a positive duty. South…

atulation. Coleridge. There is none righteous, no, not one. Rom. iii. 10. No! Nay, Heaven forbid. Coleridge.