toehold
/ˈtəʊhəʊld/
toehold noun: a foothold small enough to support just the toe.
Noun
toehold (plural toeholds)
- A foothold small enough to support just the toe.
- Any small advantage which allows one to make significant progress; a slight footing or foothold.
- Were Herat to fall to the Persians, this would give the Russians a crucial and dangerous toe-hold in western Afghanistan.1990, Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game, Folio Society, published 2010, page 151
- The tiny old houses and flats of this once impoverished quarter had mostly been refurbished into toeholds for young Atlantans from all around the Anglosphere, poor in equity but rich in expectations, who had come to the great city to incubate their careers.1995, Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age […] , New York: Bantam Spectra, →ISBN, page 373
- A hold in which the aggressor bends back the opponent's foot.
Examples of toehold in a sentence
- One in three "adult-kids" who have not left the parental nest say they are still living at home because they cannot afford to get a toehold on the property ladder by buying or renting.2009 December 8, Alan Travis, “More young adults in 20s and 30s living with parents than in past 20 years”, in The Guardian, archived from...
- In 1700, when the British were mere traders clinging on to a few coastal toeholds, the Emperor Aurangzeb ruled over a country that accounted for a quarter of the world’s economy.2017 September 7, Ferdinand Mount, “Umbrageousness”, in London Review of Books:
Forms of toehold
| plural | toeholds |
|---|---|
| alternative form | toe-hold |
| alternative form | toe hold |
Origin of toehold
From toe + hold.
Questions about toehold
- What does toehold mean?
- Toehold means a foothold small enough to support just the toe.
- How do you use toehold in a sentence?
- One in three "adult-kids" who have not left the parental nest say they are still living at home because they cannot afford to get a toehold on the property ladder by buying or renting.
- What part of speech is toehold?
- Toehold is a noun.
- How do you pronounce toehold?
- Toehold is pronounced /ˈtəʊhəʊld/ (UK).
- What is the plural of toehold?
- The plural of toehold is toeholds.
Words near toehold in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: toehold (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-toehold.wav.
Cite this entry: “toehold.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/toehold. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.