Countermoving

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Travelling in the opposite direction to something else, so that the two paths run against each other
2. Going against the flow or course of another motion, pushing back in the reverse sense
3. Describing motion that runs contrary to a different movement, heading the other way

Etymology: "Countermoving" is simply "countermove" with the ending "-ing" added, so the interesting history belongs to its two parts. The first, "counter-", comes from Latin "contra", meaning "against" or "opposite", which passed through Old French "contre" and Anglo-Norman "countre" before reaching Middle English as "counter-". The second part is "move", which traces back through Old French "mover" and Latin "movēre", meaning "to move", to a much older ancestral root shared across the Indo-European languages. Put together, the two parts describe a movement made in opposition to another, which is what "countermove" means in both its original and modern senses. The "-ing" ending simply turns the verb into a participle or gerund, so the word describes that action as it happens.

Synonyms: counteract, countervail