Meaning of deathlock | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A certain wrestling move that traps the opponent's leg.
2. Synonym of death grip.
3. A close struggle between two opponents in which each tries to kill the other.
4. A struggle to destroy a force or principle to which one is opposed, or between two mutually incompatible principles.
   figuratively
5. Rigor mortis, or a physical grip that is similarly inflexible and unyielding.
6. A similarly tight hold on something nonphysical.
   figuratively

Examples

“When close to the whale, in the very deathlock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and offhandedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer.”

“In a word, luck — that's the word — shortly threw in Paul's way the great action of his life : the most extraordinary of all naval engagements ; the unparalleled deathlock with the Serapis.”

“The wasp, who had apparently been playing possum, suddenly became very much alive, and in a flash spider and wasp were clasped in a deathlock.”

“The fighting was the most violent of the war, and along the whole line, plunging forward after intense artillery preparation, the Americans and French met the Germans in the deathlock of hand-to-hand fighting.”

“The struggle of Europe, coming, as well as past, is a final struggle of opposite principles; it is the deathlock between self-government and slavery.”

“He wrote about us as if we were all Prometheuses in noble deathlock with the forces of repression in a battle for the soul of man.”

“In our time a great struggle, which may very well be a deathlock struggle, is going on in the world between freedom on the one hand and the totalitarianism of communism on the other.”

“The traditional medical establishment, led by the conservative American Medical Association (AMA), has long engaged the chiropractic community in what has been reported (by many disgruntled Chiropractors) as a "heavily funded," "deathlock-type of struggle" focused on "government lobbies, legal actions and media manipulations" to attempt to discredit and disavow chiropractic legitimacy.”

“"Don't believe the fellow who tells you to hold your shotgun in a deathlock-tight grip — so that it won't kick you.”

“Slocum eased the hammer back down as Harding twitched one last time and his eyes remained fixed in a deathlock.”

“The animal fell backward, its talons in a deathlock on the sill of the empty window frame.”

“Elmer Blaney Harris eloquently captures the feel of the Bowery in 1906: Bands, orchestras, pianos, at war with gramophones, hand-organs, calliopes; overhead, a roar of wheels in a deathlock with shrieks and screams; whistles, gongs, rifles all busy, the smell of candy, popcorn, meats, beer, tobacco, blended with the odor of the crowd redolent now and ten of patchouli; a streaming river of people arched over by electric signs -- this is the Bowery at Coney Island.”

“But so, it seems, is the problem. The furor instigated by the war in Vietnam was projected into fraternity bull sessions and Ballantine coffee breaks. The trouble was that nobody, not even Rusk or Zinn, had a deathlock on accurate information.”

“The colonial links, broken by the spate of independence movements of the recent past, have been once again reestablished-albeit on a firmer footing-with the First World enjoying a deathlock on the fragile economies of the Third World.”

“Efforts are also being directed against the international financial institutions that are holding underdeveloped countries in the deathlock debt grip.”

“But just now, Howard was seriously considering relaxing his deathlock on the leadership.”

“But even as we troubled souls feel the deathlock of disagreements profound and if we can avoid sheer cynicism, it seems almost impossible to retain clarity about fundamental principles and diagnostic politics.”

CEFR level