What is "foothold"

Usage examples of "foothold".

Nor was there time to anchor, for the Dervish boats closed in swiftly: as they reached the barges they hooked on to the sides and the Ansar warriors tried to clamber aboard, but they were unable to obtain a foothold on the packed decks.

There had been deaths, of course, to footholds lost, to viruses and bacteria of the hinterland, and to the depredations of the inland predators, animals that unfolded in claws, teeth, cirri, and killed.

Here small patches of green, standing out in strong relief against their sandy back-grounds, mark the position of clusters of low, stunted peach trees that have obtained a foothold on the steep sand dunes.

He has a full garrison, while the other Dales have scarcely enough fighting men to maintain ourselves and prevent brigands from gaining a foothold in the region.

Greek islands of the Dodecanese which she had seized during the Turkish War, and to acquire a foothold in Asia Minor and on the Illyrian coast along the Straits of Otranto.

Joseph and Goldstone moved on towards the wire, slowly in the dark, crawling on their bellies, slipping where the clay was wet, fumbling in the mud and water to gain a foothold.

But no sooner had Christianity obtained a foothold on earth, multiplied its converts, and gained some outward sway, than its Judaizing disciples and promulgators, fastening on that which was easiest to comprehend and practise, that which was most impressive to the imagination, that which seemed most sharply to distinguish them from the unbelieving and unconforming world around, thrust far into the background this universal and eternal test of judgment set up by Jesus himself, and in place of it installed an exclusive test fashioned after a more developed and aggravated pattern of the very narrowest and worst elements in the Phariasaism which he expressly came to supersede.

With it secured, he backed out onto the pylon and began descending it to the garden, using the pegs as hand and footholds.

When a later generation of La Tours were struggling for foothold in the New World, it was not strange that a son of the De Borns, full of songcraft and spirit inherited from some troubadour soldier of the twelfth century, should turn his face to the same land.

Duckett climbed over the coaming of the bridge cockpit, the subfreezing metal of the conning tower sticking to the crotch of his fur trousers as he felt for the foothold with his boot.

Seymour Cray himself, Peter Godin had gained a foothold in the supercomputing market, and he never looked back.

His legs were dangling in space, and every time he kicked for a foothold, he felt the timberwork sag dangerously.

The snow here is soft under windslab, and he must lean up, dig away a bit with his ice axe, swim up to the new foothold, dig away some more - on and on, gasping into the oxygen mask, sweating profusely in the suddenly overwarm clothing.

Some of the fugitives made their way in at the gates, which were hurriedly closed, while others climbed up at the bastions, which sloped sufficiently to afford foothold.

Leah Brahms had to stop every meter or so to burn more handholds and footholds with her phaser.