toehold

“It’s less a takeover than targeted toeholds,” said Craig Singleton, senior director of the China Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.

Ian Murray is Scottish Labour's longest serving MP – indeed for a while he was their only MP, the party's last toehold north of the border.

The government's second argument is that without a deal, China would get a toehold in the islands.

Her ambitions have a toehold in reality — she dreams of someday managing a Norms franchise — so it’s no shock that her big job interview is scheduled that very afternoon.

To keep progressing, one has to stay ahead of the thousands of others scrambling to get a toehold in the sport.