Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An assault; an attack.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun rare The act or power of assailing; attack; assault.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun rare An assault; an attack.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • In any case, the Devil assailed me just this one last time, though during my assailment I had no reason to think this should be the end to the affair.

    Rev. Jasper Pickery and Three Manifestations of the Devil 2009

  • Hefer said that a reading of the record left one in no doubt that Fine found the application for his recusal highly offending and regarded it as an assailment of his personal integrity.

    ANC Daily News Briefing 1996

  • In that sense I have no thought of assailing it, I would make clear that I hold it beyond assailment.

    The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition Upton Sinclair 1923

  • In that sense I have no thought of assailing it, I would make clear that I hold it beyond assailment.

    The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation 1918

  • I opened it (not without fear and assailment of my senses), knowing that it must have been some serious occasion which could move her to write unto me, being absent, seeing she did it so rarely even when I was present.

    The Third Book. XIII. How the Curate and the Barber Put Their Design in Practice, with Many Other Things Worthy to Be Recorded in This Famous History 1909

  • Was he not member, duly elected, without possibility of assailment in his legal right?

    An Autobiography Besant, Annie 1893

  • As for the men, they twisted every item about Gourlay and his domicile into fresh matter of assailment.

    The House with the Green Shutters George Douglas Brown 1885

  • She had believed herself proof against such assailment, and so indeed she had been; but on the very evening of her battle for her opinions at Mrs. Fraley's she had been suddenly confronted by a new enemy, a strange power, which seemed so dangerous that she was at first overwhelmed by a sense of her own defenselessness.

    A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches Sarah Orne Jewett 1879

  • Besides bringing on us the whole mass of savage nations, whom fear, and not affection, had kept in quiet, there is danger, that in giving time to an enemy who can send reinforcements of regulars faster than we can raise them, they may strengthen Canada and Halifax beyond the assailment of our lax and divided powers.

    The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock Tupper, Frederick B 1845

  • Thus, Martin learned in the five minutes 'straggling talk about the stove, that to carry pistols into legislative assemblies, and swords in sticks, and other such peaceful toys; to seize opponents by the throat, as dogs or rats might do; to bluster, bully, and overbear by personal assailment; were glowing deeds.

    Martin Chuzzlewit Charles Dickens 1841

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