stick to one's guns
Verb
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Verb
- (dated, military, of gunners) To persist in faithfully attending to cannons while under fire.
- 1970, James Henderson, The Frigates, an account of the lesser warships of the wars from 1793 to 1815, London: Wordsworth, p. 73:
- Capitan Beaulieu-de-Long and his first lieutenant were both killed, several guns dismounted, and many of the [French frigate] crew killed and wounded. . . . Nevertheless the French stuck bravely to their guns, while the flame of the cannonade illuminated the scene beneath the canopy of smoke.
- 1970, James Henderson, The Frigates, an account of the lesser warships of the wars from 1793 to 1815, London: Wordsworth, p. 73:
- (idiomatic, by extension) To maintain one’s position or viewpoint when faced with opposition.
- 1898, Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Quiller-Couch, St. Ives, ch. 29:
- Ronald had stuck to his guns and refused me to the last.
- 1922, Agatha Christie, The Secret Adversary, ch. 15:
- "I intend to marry, of course," replied Tuppence. "That is, if"—she paused, knew a momentary longing to draw back, and then stuck to her guns bravely—"I can find some one rich enough to make it worth my while."
- 2004 Sept. 3, Mitch Frank, "[http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,692670,00.html Bush Finds His Agenda]," Time (retrieved 19 Sep 2015):
- The President . . . stuck to his guns on that, not repeating any of his recent admissions that there had been "miscalculations" in planning for the war.
- 1898, Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Quiller-Couch, St. Ives, ch. 29:
- French: camper sur ses positions
- Italian: tener duro, mantenere la propria posizione
- Spanish: seguir erre que erre
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002