to reach a stalemate
1
6.2
- idiom
:
llegar a un punto muerto
- Negotiations reached a stalemate, however, when the Baghdad government insisted on the right to prosecute U.S. personnel for crimes committed in their country.
Examples
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The committee reached a stalemate after several hours of debate without any consensus.
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According to this view, the struggle had reached a stalemate that created the conditions for a historic compromise between different class and social forces in favor of a mutual accommodation.
Academic text (2000) -
For a moment, the dogs seemed to reach a stalemate.
Fiction book (2002) -
Frank and Peter have reached a stalemate.
Fiction book (1992) -
When they reach a stalemate on the key central issues that, if settled via discussion, would ...
Blog text (32) -
Negotiators have reached a stalemate, and the situation right now is tense.
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Our objective is to reach a stalemate whereby we are attriting the enemy faster than he can replace his losses.
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By the mid-1980s, the Angolan civil war, which had been raging since 1975, had reached a stalemate.
Academic text (1992) -
Second, the FMLN offensive of 1989 made it evident that the armed conflict had reached a stalemate and that the government would have to negotiate more than just the terms of the FMLN's surrender.
Academic text (1999) -
Meanwhile, the complex of acts of resistance, boycott, and self-organization known collectively as the intifada had by August 1990 reached a stalemate with the occupation army.
Academic text (1991)
Synonyms
Progress stops because people disagree or something blocks it
Antonyms
How Deadlocked
1
6.2
251
2.8
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'reach' (attain/arrive at) combined with 'stalemate' (a situation with no progress) yields 'attain a situation of no progress.' This follows a standard verb + noun pattern found across languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would be able to infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Reach a stalemate comes from chess, where a stalemate is a position in which a player cannot move any piece and the game ends as a draw. So when people say reach a stalemate, they mean a situation where 'no side can make progress' or win.