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say it: TOH-hohld
toehold is a noun meaning "a relatively insignificant position from which future progress might be made". It carries 3 recorded senses.
a relatively insignificant position from which future progress might be made
“American diplomacy provided a toehold on which to proceed toward peace talks”
“his father gave him a toehold in the oil business”
a small foothold used in climbing
a wrestling hold in which the toe is held and the leg is twisted against the joints
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for toehold come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.