assailant
/əˈseɪlənt/
assailant noun: someone who attacks or assails another violently, or criminally.
Noun
assailant (plural assailants)
- Someone who attacks or assails another violently, or criminally.
- 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.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[ward] Blount... - […] 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.1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 2, in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, volume 1, London: for the author, page 47
- Synonyms:
- attacker
- I’ll put myself in poor and mean attire,
- A hostile critic or opponent.
- […] the assailants of the quill have their honour as much at heart as the assailants of the sword.1782, Frances Burney, Cecilia, London: T. Payne and Son and T. Cadell, Volume 5, Book 9, Chapter 3, p. 41
Adjective
assailant (not comparable)
- Assailing; attacking.
- 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...1671, John Milton, Samson Agonistes, line 1687 to 1696
assailant meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada
assailant in Tamil
- தாக்குபவர், எதிரி
assailant in Urdu
- حملہ آور
assailant in Malayalam
- attacker, mugger, assaulter
- അക്രമി, അക്രമണകാരി, ആക്രമിക്കുന്നവൻ, കയ്യേറ്റം ചെയ്യുന്നവൻ, ധർഷി, ക്രൂരമായി ആക്രമിച്ചു കവർച്ച ചെയ്യുന്നവൻ
assailant in Kannada
- ಕೈ ಮಾಡುವವ, ಆಕ್ರಮಣಕಾರ
More languagesFewer languages
- assailant in Arabic
- مُهَاجِم muhājim, مُعْتَدٍ muʕtadin
Examples of assailant in a sentence
- 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.1935, Christopher Isherwood, chapter 8, in Mr. Norris Changes Trains, Penguin, published 1961, page 89:
- 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.2018, Edo Konrad, “Living in the constant shadow of settler violence”, in +972 Magazine:
Synonyms of assailant
Forms of assailant
| plural | assailants |
|---|
Origin of 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.
Questions about assailant
- What does assailant mean?
- Assailant means someone who attacks or assails another violently, or criminally.
- What is assailant in Tamil?
- Assailant in Tamil is தாக்குபவர், எதிரி. See Assailant meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use assailant in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is assailant?
- Assailant can be a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce assailant?
- Assailant is pronounced /əˈseɪlənt/.
- What is the plural of assailant?
- The plural of assailant is assailants.
Words near assailant in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: assailant (page history and authors); assailant (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); assailant (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); assailant (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); assailant (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-assailant.wav.
Cite this entry: “assailant.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/assailant. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.