Words I'm Looking Up (One in an occasional series on words I'm looking up)

"purchase"

Not the one that means "to buy." But the one I've come across countless times without ever really registering and that I came across again in an article that read:

"Desperate to hold on to something, to gain some purchase, Clive started to keep a journal"

Here's that definition of "purchase," per Webster's New World College Dictionary":

"a firm hold applied to move something mechanically or to keep from slipping b) any apparatus for applying such a hold."

Now I know.