lost battle
1
5.5
- noun
:
batalla perdida
- In her attempts to convince her parents to let her go on the trip, she finally accepted that it was a lost battle.
The Eastern Roman Empire lost battles and lands before, but it was these events that left a scar that would never heal.
- The Eastern Roman Empire lost battles and lands before, but it was these events that left a scar that would never heal.
Examples
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Well, Bian, so much for hurly-burly, so much for winning and losing battles.
Fiction book (1998) -
The Eastern Roman Empire lost battles and lands before, but it was these events that left a scar that would never heal.
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I am a very thankful non-union employee, and CenturyLink provides extremely well for me and my family. We can sit here and argue back and forth on who makes more per hour, but without comparing pay stubs, that's a lost battle.
Blog text (28) -
I'd also add that the actual situation for sensible gun control advocates is in some ways perhaps most equivalent to—well, frankly, pro-choice reality, where we *have* lost battle after battle after battle... except worse.
Blog text (6) -
After trying to persuade the committee for months, I realized that it was a lost battle to change their minds.
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Despite their efforts to improve the safety protocols, the company faced a lost battle when the law was firmly against them.
Synonyms
557
1.3
Not reaching what was planned or expected
275
2.5
A loss in a game, match, or election that means you do not win
39
4.9
Something that has no chance of success
12
5.1
An effort that is not likely to succeed
Antonyms
How Serious
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase 'lost battle' is directly compositional: 'lost' (failed/unsuccessful) combined with 'battle' (a struggle) yields 'an unsuccessful struggle,' so a B1 learner who knows both words can readily infer the meaning. This is a transparent, cross-linguistically common pattern (adjective + noun describing result), making the expression predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
The phrase lost battle comes from real wars: when an army was defeated in a fight it lost the battle. People use this strong image for any hard struggle that ends in failure, so lost battle means trying to deal with a problem but failing.