enemy line

English

WOTD – 6 June 2018

Pronunciation

Commandos of the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division of the British Army coming ashore from Landing Craft Infantry at Gold Beach near La Rivière-Saint-Sauveur, Normandy, France, in the direction of enemy lines on 6 June 1944 at the start of the Invasion of Normandy during World War II

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɛnəmi ˈlaɪn/

• Audio (AU)

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• Hyphenation: en‧e‧my line

Noun

enemy line (plural enemy lines)

1. (military) The line of battle of one's enemy.
   • 1996, Nicholas Tracy, “The Battle of Trafalgar”, in Nelson’s Battles: The Art of Victory in the Age of Sail, London: Chatham Publ., →ISBN; republished as Nelson’s Battles: The Triumph of British Seapower, Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Seaforth Publishing, Pen and Sword Books, 2008, →ISBN, page 215:

     The approach at Trafalgar was from the windward, but Vice Admiral [Cuthbert] Collingwood did order his division to deploy in line of bearing so that the enemy line would be cut in many places, and engaged from the other side, or both sides.

   • 2008, Sam Willis, “Fleet Tactics”, in Fighting at Sea in the Eighteenth Century: The Art of Sailing Warfare, Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, →ISBN, page 132:

     Once the two fleets had met, it was then likely, if not inevitable, that only some of the attacking fleet would make it through the enemy line.

   • 2011, Sam Koon, “Phalanx and Legion: The ‘Face’ of Punic War Battle”, in Dexter Hoyos, editor, A Companion to the Punic Wars (Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World), Malden, Kingston upon Thames: Wiley-Blackwell, →ISBN; paperback edition, Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015, →ISBN, page 90:

     With this assault they drive back the thin enemy line, pressing forward through the disordered enemy.

2. (military, also figuratively, usually in the plural) The boundary of the territory controlled by the enemy.
   • 1917, Aircraft Journal, volume 1, page 17:

     The aviation service can, in two hours, go 100 miles back of enemy lines and return, bringing important information.

   • 1994, Charles H. Kraft with Mark White, editors, Behind Enemy Lines: An Advanced Guide to Spiritual Warfare, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Vine Books, →ISBN, page 7:

     As we Christians serve our Lord and Master in this world, we are living and working behind enemy lines.

   • 1998, Kathryn Karczewska, Prophecy and the Quest for the Holy Grail: Critiquing Knowledge in the Vulgate Cycle (Studies in the Humanities; 37), New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang, →ISBN, page 92:

     There are, however, other practitioners of magic in the cycle that have no concern for God or for the good; the genealogy of this enemy knowledge is clear, and serves as a memorable cautionary tale. For Merlin himself founds this enemy line by dint of a horrendous pedagogical error: victim of the entirely natural magic of falling in love, Merlin teaches Vivian "tel cose quil ne uaut onques a autrui ensegnier", thus signing his own death warrant.

   • 2003, Gil Anidjar, “De Inimicitia”, in The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy (Cultural Memory in the Present), Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, →ISBN, page 61:

     Within these (fictional) enemy lines—on the model perhaps of the "amity lines" described by Carl Schmitt—there could emerge the following questions: What is an enemy? Does the term "enemy" gather (or disseminate) a multiplicity of enemies (for the senses of "enemy" are just as many as its figures, as Aristotle would perhaps say)?

   • 2010 November 3, Christiana I. Chineme, “The Negative Side of Pain”, in God Didn’t Do It; He Only Signed Off On It: Living a Purposeful Life through the Storm, Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, →ISBN, part II (Some of the Reasons God Takes Us through Trials and Tribulations), page 142:

     We battle through life to get to God's promise for us. The devil frustrates our effort in that regard, because he knows that if you manage to cross the Red Sea and battle the enemy behind, after you climb the mountains, you will have made it to the Promised Land. So why would he make it that easy for you? he thinks. But there's no good reason to hand him over the victory by staying behind the enemy line after you've been rescued.

Translations

line of battle of one's enemy

• Galician: liña inimiga f
• Greek: γραμμή του εχθρού f (grammí tou echthroú)

boundary of the territory controlled by the enemy

Further reading

• line of battle on Wikipedia.Wikipedia