Meaning
A conflict, military or figurative, that is won not by a single decisive blow but by steadily wearing down the opponent's strength, resources, numbers or will to continue until they collapse or give in. Applied to wars, lawsuits, boardroom struggles or family feuds, it implies a long, grinding contest in which endurance matters more than brilliance. Capitalized as the proper name of the 1967-70 Egypt-Israel conflict. Suits informal figurative contexts; in technical military writing the term is attrition warfare. Regional use: English worldwide; a fixed proper noun in Middle East history, 1967-70.
Origin
Attrition entered Middle English by 1400 - the OED's factsheet, verified directly, gives earliest evidence from before 1400 - borrowed from Middle French and post-classical Latin attritio, from classical Latin atterere, to rub against or grind down. Its oldest English senses were theological and medical, with figurative wearing-down uses from 1678. The OED dates the military sense, reducing strength or effectiveness through sustained attack or pressure, to the 1890s subject branch - verified directly on the fetched factsheet - and records that it was earliest used in the phrase war of attrition, first quoted from Belford's Magazine of October 1890: 'It was a war of attrition, and a dark, dreary track of desolations.' An 1884 San Francisco Bulletin item had already called attrition the avowed Federal policy in the Civil War. The phrase was therefore not coined for the First World War, as is often claimed, though that war made it famous. Egypt and Israel's 1967-70 conflict took the phrase as its formal name, proclaimed by Nasser on 8 March 1969.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- attrition warfare
- battle of attrition
Usage Examples
- The lawsuit became a war of attrition that only the deepest pockets could survive.
- Commanders admitted the campaign had turned into a war of attrition, measured in yards gained and casualty lists.
- Parents of toddlers know the bedtime routine is a war of attrition.