assail

From Middle English assailen, from Old French assaillir, assalir, from Late Latin assalīre, from Latin ad (“at, towards”) + salīre (“jump”). See also assault.

• IPA^(key): /əˈseɪl/

  • Audio (Southern England):

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• Rhymes: -eɪl
• Homophone: asail

assail (third-person singular simple present assails, present participle assailing, simple past and past participle assailed)

1. (transitive, sometimes figurative) To attack with harsh words or violent force.

   Muggers assailed them as they entered an alley.

   Our ears were assailed by her joyous efforts on her new saxophone.

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     With greedy force he gan the fort assayle, / Whereof he weend possesse soone to bee, / And win rich spoile of ransackt chastitee.

   • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:

     [L]et us once again assail your ears, / That are so fortified against our story, / What we two nights have seen.

   • 1914, Saki [pseudonym; Hector Hugh Munro], “The Story-teller”, in Beasts and Super-Beasts […], London: John Lane, The Bodley Head […], →OCLC, page 238:

     "Unhappy woman!" he observed to himself as he walked down the platform of Templecombe station; "for the next six months or so those children will assail her in public with demands for an improper story!"

   • 2007, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Wizard of the Crow, Nairobo: East African Educational Publishers, Book 2, Chapter 3, p. 64,^[1]

     He did not like being in crowds, foul smells galore assailing his nostrils.

2. (transitive, figurative) To overcome or successfully argue against; defeat.
   • 1923, Ernest Bramah, The Eyes of Max Carrados:

     "Yes," he said, half musing to himself, "I knew it must exist: the one explanation that accounts for everything and cannot be assailed. We have reached the bed-rock of truth at last."

   • 1942, Zora Neale Hurston, chapter 14, in Dust Tracks on a Road‎^[2], New York, N.Y.: Arno Press and The New York Times, published 1969, page 258:

     We got married immediately after I finished my work […] which should have been the happiest day of my life. […] But, it was not my happiest day. I was assailed by doubts.

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