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brinkmanship

UK/ˈbɹɪŋk.mən.ʃɪp/US/ˈbɹɪŋk.mənˌʃɪp/
nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutral

Brinkmanship is pushing a dangerous situation to the very edge. Practise brinkmanship.

It works by convincing the other side you are willing to go over, which requires being believed. Brinkmanship fails catastrophically when both sides are playing it at once.

Definitions of brinkmanship

  1. 1nounbrinkmanshipPushing a dangerous situation to the very edge.C2

    “The brinkmanship went on until four hours before the deadline.”

brinkmanship is a tactic.

Where it comes from

Brink plus -manship, coined in the 1950s on the pattern of gamesmanship, about American foreign policy.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *bʰren-

  2. English, today

    brinkmanship

From brink + manship.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

brinkmanship in the wild

  • The game has also been used to describe the mutual assured destruction of nuclear warfare, especially the sort of brinkmanship involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

    Chicken (game)

  • Deterrence is a 1999 political thriller drama film written and directed by Rod Lurie, depicting fictional events about nuclear brinkmanship.

    Deterrence (film)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.