Meaning
A defensive struggle fought to slow a defeat that can no longer be prevented, or to cover a retreat. Figuratively it describes resistance to inevitable change - a campaign to save a closing library, a publisher defending print, a union contesting automation - where the fighters' aim is delay and dignity rather than outright victory. The idiom concedes the outcome in advance: calling a campaign a rearguard action means the speaker expects it to lose, however admirably. Regional use: General English; figurative use chiefly British and Australian.
Origin
From the military term 'rearguard', the detachment at the back of an army that covers a retreat. The word entered English from the French arrière-garde by 1481, with the parallel forms 'arrière-guard' (1489) and 'retroguard' (1574) recorded in the OED's citation record, and its 'rear' element ultimately traces to Latin retro, 'backward'. The archetype of the doomed rearguard is Roncesvalles in 778, where Basque raiders destroyed Charlemagne's rearguard under Roland, later immortalised in the Song of Roland. The figurative sense - a battle already lost, fought to limit the damage - grew through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when writers applied it to theology, politics, and medicine, and the idiom remains chiefly British and Australian today.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- fight a rearguard action
- fighting a rearguard action
- rear-guard action (variant spelling)
- rearguard action
Usage Examples
- Residents mounted a rearguard action against the closure, winning two postponements and a fuller consultation.
- The publisher fought a rearguard action for hardbacks, trimming the list but refusing to abandon it.
- Even the minister's allies called the amendment a rearguard action that would delay the bill by months, not stop it.