ASSAIL • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Assail

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/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.

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Etymology of 'Assail'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Assail" Quotes from Famous Books

... preparations to assail us everywhere. Roanoke Island, Norfolk, Beaufort, and Newbern; Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, Pensacola, and New Orleans are all menaced by numerous fleets on the sea-board, and in the West great numbers ...

— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... fear came from the room where the women had been left. The men hurried thither, and as they gained the door, a black face appeared at the broken pane. Once more Eddring felt hesitation at what seemed simple murder, yet still his rifle was rising when he felt a sudden dizziness assail him. A long arm pushed him away. He saw the brown barrel of the squirrel rifle rising into line once more. The black at the window fell back, shot through the forehead. Sarah Ann handed Jim Bowles another bullet. ...

— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough

... my watch. Dark have been my forebodings, standing first on one foot and then on the other, through the night hours, preyed upon by visions, holding my eyelids open by my will, while strange thoughts like vultures over their carrion, wheeling about above me, assail me, tear me with their beaks and talons. Dark looms the cloud bank through the black portals of the river. The fog holds the bleared eyes of the morning. And I, stiff with watching, suspect some evil. Some foul play is in the mountains, ...

— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman

... by the long probation of his Homeric translations, and his equally unrivalled powers of satire, let loose and emboldened by the brutalities of the "Dunciad," found their fitting field. Aimed at the old eternal vices and frailties of humanity, they assail them with a pungency, a force, a wit, and a directness which, in English verse, have no parallel. Indeed it may be doubted whether the portraits of Bufo and Sporus, of Atossa and Atticus, have been ...

— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... no place to assail Christianity but a divinity school? Is there no one to write infidel books except the professors of Christian theology? Is a theological seminary an appropriate place for a general massacre ...

— The Church, the Schools and Evolution • J. E. (Judson Eber) Conant

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