Getting in now to win local hearts and minds is the only way to prevent this war of attrition from worsening further.
It is not a decisive war, with a single, signature victory, but a war of attrition.
Much of it will be guided by our attrition rate, how many officers are leaving the department and where they're leaving from.
But there is no consensus about what the attrition of ISIS looks like.
Johnson followed a policy with only a military outcome: attrition.
Water and attrition soon round these minerals on their sharp edges, and thus show that they have come from some little distance.
The difficulty was to overcome its susceptibility to attrition.
Or her constitution—physical and spiritual—had succumbed to the attrition of duty against womanly instinct.
I say that attrition with confession is necessary: he believes that contrition is necessary.
It grew better and brighter with the attrition of repeated delivery, and was fresh and new to every new audience.
1540s, "abrasion, a scraping," from Latin attritionem (nominative attritio), literally "a rubbing against," noun of action from past participle stem of atterere "to wear, rub away," figuratively "to destroy, waste," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + terere "to rub" (see throw (v.)). The earliest sense in English is from Scholastic theology (late 14c.), "sorrow for sin merely out of fear of punishment," a minor irritation, and thus less than contrition. The sense of "wearing down of military strength" is a World War I coinage (1914). Figurative use by 1930.
attrition at·tri·tion (ə-trĭsh'ən)
n.
A wearing away by friction or rubbing, such as the loss of tooth structure caused by abrasive foods or grinding of the teeth.
