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Glite Dictionary
🧱 To fix firmly 🪖 To dig in
to entrench

to entrench

18 6.7
To make an idea or belief so strong that it is hard to change
  • verb
  • /ɪnˈtrɛnʧ/
: afianzar
  • So far, however, the government has not formally entrenched native title rights in law.
  • deeply entrenched
  • firmly entrenched
  • become entrenched

And maybe that's better than just like, you know, entrenching something that you've decided is best.

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Examples

  • Don't entrench yourself in your position.

  • And participating in this in any way is colluding and it's helping to entrench and, and create the problem.

    andrew gold | heretics.

  • And you either entrench, dig in your heels and fight it or you let it break you and take you into new places.

  • However, it remains an entrenched practice in many rural areas and among the destitute poor.

    Academic text (2008)

  • Researchers may say that opportunity objectively exists, but the entrenched poor are not convinced.

    Academic text (1991)

  • Fayyad's approach also challenges some of the deeply entrenched corruption that remains in Palestinian society.

    Academic text (2011)

  • They don't want a power struggle with entrenched management.

    Spider-Man (2002)

  • I want to know how this man from humble origins succeeded in toppling what he saw as an entrenched political class.

    Terroir (2023)

  • Second, the drug-war bureaucracy remains bloated, firmly entrenched, and extremely resistant to change.

    Academic text (2012)

  • The new policies aim to entrench equality in the workplace, making discrimination harder to reverse.

Synonyms

to lock in
vsto entrench
54 4.4

To make a decision or plan fixed so it cannot be easily changed

applies more to ideas or attitudes rather than concrete decisions or deals
to ingrain
vsto entrench
10 6.1

To make a habit or idea a strong lasting part of someone's life

focuses on being hard to change in wider contexts
to implant
vsto entrench
9 5.7

Put a strong idea or belief into someone's mind

is more general, stressing strong resistance to change
to engraining
vsto entrench
3 7.3

To make an idea or habit stay in a person's mind

applies more widely and stresses resistance to change in many settings
to form
vsto entrench
2 3.9

To make an idea or habit become fixed in someone's mind

focuses more on lasting difficulty to remove rather than initial formation
to ossify
vsto entrench
1 9.5

Become fixed or make something fixed and refuse to change

is neutral and stresses difficulty of removal rather than negative rigidity

Antonyms

to dismantle
107 4.2

Take something apart into separate pieces

to dislodge
29 6.1

To force something or someone out of a place where they are stuck

How Firm

to entrench
18 6.7
to cement
43 4.4
to establish
289 4.1
to propose
956 3.0
to suggest
∞ 1.6

Surface Forms

entrench infinitive
entrenched past
entrenched past participle
entrenching present participle
entrenches third person singular

Morphology

entrench = trench (semi-transparent) = en + trench

The figurative sense 'firmly establish' is a metaphorical extension of the literal 'put into a trench', so the relation is understandable but not fully literal for learners.

Etymology

Entrench comes from the idea of putting something into a trench, a long 'ditch', with the start en- meaning 'in'. A helpful image is to think of a belief or power put into a deep ditch so it is hard to move, which is why to entrench something is to make it very hard to change.