front line

See also: frontline and front-line

English

Alternative forms

• front-line (in attributive use), frontline

Noun

front line (plural front lines)

1. (military) A front, or a boundary between opposing positions.
2. (by extension) A site of a conflict, effort, or controversial matter of any kind.
   • 2004 December 20, “Reading problems? It's time to consider phonics”, in Chicago Tribune:

     With such results possible on the front line of teaching, the only question remaining is whether much of the education industry will overcome its ....

   • 2023 July 10, James Poniewozik, “The Twitter Watch Party Is Over”, in The New York Times‎:

     With Donald J. Trump in office, using Twitter as a cattle prod to shock the country to attention multiple times a day […] there was a sense that every day on the site was a battle. That attitude was reflected in users who saw themselves as soldiers, eternally fighting to shift the front lines of the discourse an inch or two in the correct direction.

3. The site of interaction with outsiders, such as customers.
   • 1990 July 1, “The performing art of service management.”, in Management Review:

     As one front line worker expressed it in a focus group, good managers "have a way about them" that makes them credible to others. ...

   • 2025 July 23, Richard Foster, “Huddersfield's overdue makeover”, in RAIL, number 1040, page 36:

     And that's not all - the historic timber tea room has been dismantled to allow the platforms to be altered. […] The tea room - one of the few timber station buildings still in front line service - will then be painstakingly rebuilt, but in a slightly different position.

4. (euphemistic) A low level.
   • 1949 September 27, “Field's Holds its Workers in High Respect”, in Chicago Tribune:

     Each of us, from top brass down to the front line worker, wishes to feel the satisfaction of doing something worth while and doing it well.

5. (soccer) attack, collectively the attackers or forwards.
   • 2011 January 25, Paul Fletcher, “Arsenal 3 - 0 Ipswich (agg 3 - 1)”, in BBC‎:

     The home team eventually started to unpick the Town defence and Fabregas forced a saved from visiting goalkeeper Marton Fulop after collecting a pass from Bendtner, who played on the right side of the front line.

Synonyms

• (low-level work): the trenches, coalface

Antonyms

• (antonym(s) of “soccer”): back line

Translations

military boundary between opposing positions

Albanian: please add this translation if you can Arabic: خَطّ أَمَامِيّ m (ḵaṭṭ ʔamāmiyy) Armenian: առաջնագիծ (hy) (aṙaǰnagic) Azerbaijani: cəbhə, ön cəbhə, cəbhə xətti Belarusian: лі́нія фро́нту f (línija fróntu), фронт m (front), перадава́я f (pjeradavája) Bulgarian: фронтова линия f (frontova linija), фронт (bg) m (front) Chinese: Mandarin: 前線 / 前线 (zh) (qiánxiàn) Danish: frontlinje c, front c Dutch: frontlijn (nl) m or f Esperanto: please add this translation if you can Estonian: please add this translation if you can Finnish: etulinja French: front (fr) m, ligne de front (fr) f Georgian: please add this translation if you can German: Front (de) f, Frontlinie (de) f Greek: μέτωπο (el) n (métopo), πρωτή γραμμή f (protí grammí) Hungarian: frontvonal (hu) Irish: líne thosaigh f Japanese: 前線 (ja) (ぜんせん, zensen), 最前線 (ja) (さいぜんせん, saizensen) Korean: 전선(戰線) (ko) (jeonseon), 최전선(最前線) (ko) (choejeonseon) Latin: frōns prima f Latvian: please add this translation if you can Lithuanian: please add this translation if you can Norwegian: Bokmål: frontlinje m or f Persian: خط مقدم (xatt-e moqaddam) Polish: linia walki f Portuguese: linha de frente f Romanian: front (ro) n Russian: ли́ния фро́нта f (línija frónta) (military only), фронт (ru) m (front) (military only), передова́я (ru) f (peredovája) Slovak: please add this translation if you can Swedish: frontlinje (sv) c Turkish: please add this translation if you can Ukrainian: лі́нія фро́нту f (línija fróntu), фронт m (front), передова́ f (peredová) Vietnamese: tiền tuyến (vi), chiến tuyến (vi)

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