Against means in opposition to, or touching and leaning on. Vote against, lean against the wall, against the rules.
The opposition sense covers votes, arguments, teams and rules. The physical sense means resting on: propped against the door. Against also means in preparation for or in contrast with: save against a rainy day, red against green. Note up against it, meaning in difficulty; against the clock; against all odds; and that against is one of a small group of English words that ends in an s that is not a plural.
1prepositionoppositionIn opposition to.~98%
“Most of the villagers are against the plan to build a motorway through the valley.”
2prepositionagainstTouching and leaning on.~2%
“She leaned her bike against the wall and went inside.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 18 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
against is a relation of opposition or contact.
Middle English ayenes is again plus an s that was an old adverbial ending, and the t was added later by mistaken analogy with words like amidst. The word carries two spelling accidents at once.
Middle English
ayenes
English, today
against
Built from
From Middle English ayenes. Formed from Middle English ayenes, agenes, againes (“in opposition to”), a southern variant of agen, or directly from again, either way with adverbial genitive singular ending -es; the parasitic -t was added circa 1350, probably by confusion with the superlative ending -est. by surface analysis, again + -st. Cognate with stq juun (“against”), West Frisian tsjin (“against”), Dutch tegen (“against”), German Low German gegen (“against”), German gegen (“against”), Icelandic gegn (“against”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA