armlock

From arm +‎ lock.

armlock (plural armlocks)

1. A wrestling move in which the opponent's arm is held immobile.
2. Any of several distinct attacks against an opponent’s arm in martial arts.
3. A fighting hold in which the arm is used to immobilise an opponent.
   • 1999, Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page 47:

     It would keep the bone-cage of his body safe:
     no enemy's clasp would crush him in it,
     no vicious armlock choke his life out.

4. (figuratively, by extension) Power to control or heavily influence something or someone.
   • 2012 September 29, “Venezuela’s presidential election: The autocrat and the ballot box”, in The Economist‎^[1], archived from the original on 20 December 2020:

     Mr Chávez remains a formidable opponent. […] He has an armlock on the country’s institutions.

armlock (third-person singular simple present armlocks, present participle armlocking, simple past and past participle armlocked)

1. (transitive) To hold in an armlock.

• lockram, marlock