Examples of rearguard

• Yet much of the book is a foot-dragging rearguard action which subtlely attempts to undermine the established hypothesis.

• Firms that had once dominated colonial polities now found themselves fighting rearguard actions, compelled to give way on one critical issue after another.

• Rather, the past two centuries have been a perpetual rearguard action against the modernising forces at the gates of both palace and temple.

• The rearguard stood and fought fiercely for two days without interruption.

• Aging movements, if they have made their way over time into the existing party establishment, pose the prospect of rearguard resistance to insurgency.

• Their criticisms amount to a kind of cultural protectionism, the rearguard action of outmoded gatekeepers protesting the rise of new mediators.

• In fact, the triumph of the dean and chapter was only achieved through a highly effective rearguard action to defeat a major threat to its authority.

• It can develop in ways that are more inclusive of all workers or in ways that preserve a distinction between an economic vanguard and an economic rearguard.