Wiktionary
n. An attack designed to prevent an enemy from attacking, or from moving its position
Usage examples of "holding action".
We will fight a holding action and await reinforcements from the west.
Which might happen, but it is a hard kind of thing to bet on, because there is no precedent in the annals of presidential politics for a situation like this: with more than half the primaries still ahead of him, Carter is now running virtually unopposed for the Democratic nomination, and -- barring some queer and unlikely development -- he is going to have to spend the next two months in a holding action until he can go to New York in July and pick up the nomination.
For Sax this was a good functional description of life itself, of its holding action against entropy.
Though Big Al agreed, saying that he intended to leave that fight up to the 55th's commander, he also stated that he would suggest a holding action at Alsfeld with one brigade, and a maneuver to the north and west with the other.
Meanwhile the holding action at the bottom of the bluff continued with a desultory exchange of shots more to indicate the presence of opposition than to press an attack, McCready stroked his rifle, and thought, How to Start a War in One Easy Lesson.