ASSAIL • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Assail

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/əsˈeɪl/ Listen

verb

Assail v. t. (past & past part. assailed; pres. part. assailing)

To attack with violence, or in a vehement and hostile manner; to assault; to molest; as, to assail a man with blows; to assail a city with artillery. "No rude noise mine ears assailing." "No storm can now assail The charm he wears within."

To encounter or meet purposely with the view of mastering, as an obstacle, difficulty, or the like. "The thorny wilds the woodmen fierce assail."

To attack morally, or with a view to produce changes in the feelings, character, conduct, existing usages, institutions; to attack by words, hostile influence, etc.; as, to assail one with appeals, arguments, abuse, ridicule, and the like. "The papal authority... assailed." "They assailed him with keen invective; they assailed him with still keener irony."

Synonyms: To attack; assault; invade; encounter; fall upon. See Attack.

See images of 'Assail'

Etymology of 'Assail'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Assail" Quotes from Famous Books

... down with a gurgling cry. Again he rose, grasped the spar with his left arm, glared wildly round, and clenched his right hand as if ready to hit on the nose any creature—fish, flesh, or fowl—that should assail him. ...

— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne

... boy who, she faintly remembered, had erupted into her presence hours before with a request which she had granted without properly hearing. He was not in evidence. Evidently his petition had also been associated with the gnawing pangs which assail boyhood at ...

— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace

... part, I cannot bear to live until fortune decides the event of this war. If I cannot now persuade you to make a lasting peace, and so become the benefactor instead of the scourge of the two nations, be well assured that you shall never assail Rome without first passing over the corpse of your mother. I cannot wait for that day on which I shall either see my countrymen triumphing over my son, or my son triumphing over his country. If indeed I were to ask you to betray the Volscians and save your country, this would be a hard ...

— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch

... this juvenile upstart, was to him gall and wormwood; and, moreover, he himself had come in for his share in some of those grotesque jeux d'esprit by which, at this period, Blackwood's young Tory wags delighted to assail their elders and betters of the Whig persuasion. To prevent the proprietor of this new journal from acquiring anything like a hold on the author of Waverley, and thus competing with himself not only in periodical literature, ...

— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... before them, 270 Come, O forest, with thy people, Junipers, bring all your army. Come, O pinewoods, with your household, And thou pond with all thy children, With their swords a hundred swordsmen, And a thousand mail-clad heroes, That they may assail this Hiisi, And ...

— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous

More quotes...