boots on the ground
n.pl.— «Many American strategists now argue that even light, token US land forces—”getting US combat boots on the ground,” as General Warner puts it—would signal to an enemy that the US is physically guarding the area and can only be dislodged at the risk of war.» —“US rapid strike force: How to get there first with the most” by John K. Coole Christian Science Monitor (Boston, Mass.) Apr. 11, 1980. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...