toehold

plural toeholds · alternative toe-hold · alternative toe hold

1. climbingA foothold small enough to support just the toe.
2. broadlyfigurativelyAny 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

   3 more examples

   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

   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 the original on 08 Jun 2021

   Strachey argued that the Raj was bad for Britain and the British. In Inglorious Empire, Shashi Tharoor argues, with equal passion, that it was much worse for India and the Indians. 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

3. governmentA hold in which the aggressor bends back the opponent's foot.