deathlock

Noun

deathlock (plural deathlocks)

1. A certain wrestling move that traps the opponent's leg.
2. A close struggle between two opponents in which each tries to kill the other.
   • When close to the whale, in the very deathlock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and offhandedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer.1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick: Or the Whale
   • In a word, luck — that's the word — shortly threw in Paul's way the great action of his life : the most extraordinary of all naval engagements ; the unparalleled deathlock with the Serapis.1855, Israel Potter: his fifty years of exile, page 125
3. (figuratively) A struggle to destroy a force or principle to which one is opposed, or between two mutually incompatible principles.
   • The struggle of Europe, coming, as well as past, is a final struggle of opposite principles; it is the deathlock between self-government and slavery.1852, The United States Democratic Review - Volume 30, page 411
   • He wrote about us as if we were all Prometheuses in noble deathlock with the forces of repression in a battle for the soul of man.1983, Kent Forrester, Jerry A. Herndon, The Freshman Reader: Essays and Casebook, →ISBN, page 193
4. Rigor mortis, or a physical grip that is similarly inflexible and unyielding.
   • "Don't believe the fellow who tells you to hold your shotgun in a deathlock-tight grip — so that it won't kick you.1936, Field and Stream - Volume 41, page 43
   • Slocum eased the hammer back down as Harding twitched one last time and his eyes remained fixed in a deathlock.1988, Jake Logan, Sixgun law, →ISBN, page 144
5. (figuratively) A similarly tight hold on something nonphysical.
   • But so, it seems, is the problem. The furor instigated by the war in Vietnam was projected into fraternity bull sessions and Ballantine coffee breaks. The trouble was that nobody, not even Rusk or Zinn, had a deathlock on accurate information.1968, Arbutus, page 56
   • The colonial links, broken by the spate of independence movements of the recent past, have been once again reestablished-albeit on a firmer footing-with the First World enjoying a deathlock on the fragile economies of the Third World.1989, Manabendra Nath Roy, The Radical Humanist - Volume 53, page 21