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assailment. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
assailment, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
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English
Etymology
From 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, pages 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, transl., 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, 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, chapter 16, in Thelma,, volume 2, London: Richard Bentley, page 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.
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