militate against

Related to militate against: stirred up, undeterred, standing down

militate against

To have an active influence or effect against or in opposition to someone or something. This conviction will militate against your chances of getting hired in the future. Instead, the regulation has ended up militating against fostering the kind of young, motivated talent this industry so desperately needs.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

militate against something

[for something] to work against something. Everything you have said today militates against an early settlement to our disagreement. This really militates against my going to college.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • against
  • against (someone or something)
  • get up against
  • get up against (someone or something)
  • clash
  • clash against
  • clash against (someone or something)
  • fortify (someone or something) against (something) with (something)
  • avenge (oneself) against (someone or something)
  • build a case against (someone or something)
References in periodicals archive
Attacks on weaker sections that militate against our national ethos are aberrations that need to be dealt with firmly," he said.
The concern is that this will raise the cost of credit and hence militate against growth.
Point being: dread at the advances Iran is making should be properly tempered with optimism at the advances that anti-Iran forces are makingand that there is no reason why the latter advances shouldn't outweigh the former ones and thereby militate against something so drastic as, say, a preemptive military strike.
give your and Letters and are editor's Ostensibly the plan to minimise landfill may seem sensible but there are stumbling blocks which militate against poorer families.
Pakistanis are already subjected to discriminatory treatment at American Airports and that enhanced security screenings would militate against cultural values of Pakistanis, he maintained.
READING Jonathan Kay's Derby A To Z yesterday highlighted the problem which continues to militate against the Irish runners' prospects in any British competition.
What has concerned economists are the serious resource constraints currently facing the country that militate against increasing subsidies as their impact on the deficit may be more inflationary than would the relief from the subsidies themselves.
The justices recognize that undue hardship could militate against a retroactive order being made as of the date of the change of circumstances.
Among these are the magic object--in "Mambiala Hill," the "good cook pot" that feeds the hungry and in "The Amazing Guinea" the captive natural phenomenon: "Devils were holding Rain prisoner in a big earthen pot, and Madame Misery, sewing strife, swooped down on the land of the rice eaters." The unreality of the tales is adapted, then, to Cuban colonial reality, and often the texts militate against hierarchy, power, and even the genre conventions themselves.
The first section argues that psychology has been and remains mired in conceptual problems that militate against its full development as a science.
The findings also indicated that lack of fund, ICT facilities, electricity, among others; militate against the use of technology media.
But the political realities of the EU militate against an approach that could simultaneously cover the key institutions the Commission, the Parliament, the Council and the key components, the member states.
My own Community, though it is at present drawing up a new Initial Formation Program, has in its present program guidelines for ministering "in a society where most people have difficulty accepting certain teachings of the Church, where many of the prevailing cultural factors militate against appreciation for traditional Christian values." One guideline given is "that Basilians have a profound appreciation of the role of the Magisterium in the life of the Church and for the role of theologians and other thinkers who strive to express the traditional teachings of the Church in ways that are intelligible to contemporary people." (7)
I'm not surprised that non-hunters not only do not support hunting but actively militate against it when hunters mad editors of gun magazines do not appreciate how disgraceful such a picture is as the one on page 53 of the October 2004 issue.
Even more damning, she ignores everything in Solzhenitsyn's writings that might militate against her claims.