standing ground

English

Noun

standing ground (plural standing grounds)

1. (chiefly figurative) A place on which someone or something can stand firmly, especially in order to fight a contest or to take a secure view of something; a secure foundation. [from 17th c.]
   • 1848, William Hodge Mill, Five Sermons on the Nature of Christianity, section 2:

     In opposing them we shall proceed […] on that firm standing-ground which all our truly great Divines have marked out, of adherence to the principles of the Ancient Church.

   • 1872, George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book I, chapter 7:

     Those provinces of masculine knowledge seemed to her a standing-ground from which all truth could be seen more truly.