Definition of "countervail"
countervail
verb
third-person singular simple present countervails, present participle countervailing, simple past and past participle countervailed
(obsolete) To have the same value or number as.
Quotations
Nay could their numbers counteruaile the ſtarsOr [euer] driſling drops of April ſhowers,Or withered leaues that Autume ſhaketh down,Yet would the Souldane by his conquering power:So ſcatter and conſume them in his rage,That not a man ſhal liue to rue their fall.
c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, Act IIII, scene i
To counter, counteract, counterbalance, neutralize, or negate.
Quotations
It cannot counteruaile the exchange of joy / That one ſhort minute giues me in her ſight:
c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene vi], page 63, column 2
When justice stops being effective (or when crimes of corruption stop being punished) and when political violence is no longer a threat, there is nothing left to cause fear in those who govern shamelessly, that is, buoyed by a mood they aren’t in control of and that no one is on hand to countervail.
2020 February 8, Patrick Boucheron, “'Real power is fear': what Machiavelli tells us about Trump in 2020”, in The Guardian
Quotations
If [Wilfred] Owen preserves his youthful romanticism, or at least a shell of it, he uses it to countervail the horrifying scenes he describes, just as he poses his own youth against the age-old spectacle of men dying in pain and futility.
1988, Richard Ellmann, The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, 2nd edition, New York: W.W. Norton, page 539