assailment
English
Etymology
assail + -ment
Noun
assailment (countable and uncountable, plural assailments)
- (now rare) The act of assailing.
- Synonyms: assault, attack
- 1595, Henoch Clapham, Sommons to Doomes Daie, Edinburgh: Robert Waldegrave, pp. 41-42,
- Outward conjectures may bee drawne of his [Christ’s] neere approching, […] but the period of time, […] as vncertaine, as is the day, moneth, yeare of the theeues assailment vnto the housholder.
- 1612, Thomas Shelton (translator), The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-errant, Don-Quixote of the Mancha, Part 3, Chapter 13, pp. 269-270,
- I opened it [the letter] not without feare and assailement of my senses, knowing that it must haue beene some serious occasion, which could moue her to write vnto me,
- 1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, chapter 16, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, OCLC 977517776, page 207:
- 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.
- 1887, Marie Corelli, Thelma, London: Richard Bentley, Volume 2, Chapter 16, p. 40,
- […] seeing her extraordinary beauty, and forestalling the dangers and temptations into which the possession of such exceptional charms might lead her, she adopted a wise preventive course, that cased her as it were in armour, proof against all the assailments of flattery.
- 2018, Anna Burns, Milkman, London: Faber & Faber, Part 3,
- Meanwhile, during all this puzzlement, those unpleasant waves, biological ripple upon nasty ripple, kept up assailment on my legs and backbone.
Further reading
- assailment at OneLook Dictionary Search
Anagrams
- Maslenitsa, laminasets