assailant

From Old French assaillant, from the verb assaillir, from Late Latin assalīre, from Latin ad (“to, towards”) + salīre (“to jump”). Equivalent to assail +‎ -ant.

• IPA^(key): /əˈseɪlənt/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

assailant (plural assailants)

1. Someone who attacks or assails another violently, or criminally.

   Synonym: attacker

   • c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     I’ll put myself in poor and mean attire,
     And with a kind of umber smirch my face;
     The like do you; so shall we pass along,
     And never stir assailants.

   • 1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 2, in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano‎, volume 1, London: for the author, page 47:

     […] commonly some of us used to get up a tree to look out for any assailant, or kidnapper, that might come upon us; for they sometimes took those opportunities of our parents absence to attack and carry off as many as they could seize.

   • 1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 17, in My Bondage and My Freedom. , New York, Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan , →OCLC, part I (Life as a Slave), page 244:

     […] just as he leaned over to get the stick, I seized him with both hands by the collar, and, with a vigorous and sudden snatch, I brought my assailant harmlessly, his full length, on the not over clean ground—for we were now in the cow yard.

   • 1935, Christopher Isherwood, chapter 8, in Mr. Norris Changes Trains‎, Penguin, published 1961, page 89:

     In the middle of a crowded street a young man would be attacked, stripped, thrashed, and left bleeding on the pavement; in fifteen seconds it was all over and the assailants had disappeared.

   • 2018, Edo Konrad, “Living in the constant shadow of settler violence”, in +972 Magazine:

     In the village of Aqraba, the Sheikh Saadeh Mosque was set on fire before the assailants graffitied the words “price tag” and “revenge” on its walls.

2. (figuratively, by extension) A hostile critic or opponent.
   • 1782, Frances Burney, Cecilia, London: T. Payne and Son and T. Cadell, Volume 5, Book 9, Chapter 3, p. 41,

     the assailants of the quill have their honour as much at heart as the assailants of the sword.

assailant (not comparable)

1. Assailing; attacking.
   • 1671, John Milton, Samson Agonistes, line 1687 to 1696:

     But he though blind of sight, / Despis'd, and thought extinguish'd quite, / With inward eyes illuminated, / His fiery virtue roused / From under ashes into sudden flame, / And as an evening dragon came, / Assailant on the perched roosts / And nests in order ranged / Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle / His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.

• Alsatians, alsatians