attrition

About four million people live there - most of them displaced from towns and cities that Assad’s forces won back from rebels in a brutal war of attrition.

They sought to impose a war of attrition on Israel, and succeeded for almost a year.

Still, as the attrition rose, Scotland prospered, despite being a man down.

Even if not numerically significant, any infusion of manpower can count at a time when both sides are suffering attrition and scrambling to find recruits.

It's really a matter of attrition, as you might say, over the next few years until we finally push these regimes into some sort of shape or replace them.