assaultive
assaultive adjective: confrontational; tending or seeming to assault; characterized by assault.
Adjective
assaultive (comparative more assaultive, superlative most assaultive)
- Confrontational; tending or seeming to assault; characterized by assault.
- an assaultive patient; an assaultive incident
- […] we must say, that depreciatory judgments and assaultive criticism, are not only not to our taste, but especially ungrateful to our feelings.1852, “A Dish of Willis,” review of Nathaniel Parker Willis, Pencillings by the Way, in Church’s Bizarre: For Fireside and Wayside, New Series, Part 12, 18 September, 1852, p. 367
Noun
assaultive (plural assaultives)
- A person who assaults others.
- This man is not only very very sick, but I believe he is definitely a Potential Assaultive.1962, Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, New York: Signet, page 134
- Extreme assaultives were operationally defined as those who were convicted of murder, manslaughter, or attempted murder. Moderate assaultives included persons convicted of wounding with intent to cause serious bodily harm, malicious or unlawful wounding, and assault.1980, Curt R. Bartol, chapter 8, in Criminal Behavior: A Psychosocial Approach,, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, page 223
Examples of assaultive in a sentence
- For the most part, his rages in the past have been directed at authority figures—father, brother, Army sergeant, state parole officer—and have led to violent assaultive behavior on several occasions.1966, Truman Capote, In Cold Blood, New York: Random House, Part 4, p. 297:
- We live in an increasingly assaultive and noisy environment, and one may obtain the clearest histories of the provocative effects of this in some migraineurs.1985, Oliver Sacks, chapter 8, in Migraine: Understanding a Common Disorder, London: Pan, published 1987, page 165:
- As assaultive as "Made in U.S.A" can be, it also seems to have been made in a spirit of insouciance, improvisation and fun.2009 January 9, A. O. Scott, “Godard's '60s Policier, Set in Atlantic City, France”, in New York Times:
Forms of assaultive
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more assaultive |
| superlative | most assaultive |
| Noun | |
| plural | assaultives |
Origin of assaultive
From assault + -ive.
Words formed from assaultive
Questions about assaultive
- What does assaultive mean?
- Assaultive means confrontational; tending or seeming to assault; characterized by assault.
- How do you use assaultive in a sentence?
- For the most part, his rages in the past have been directed at authority figures—father, brother, Army sergeant, state parole officer—and have led to violent assaultive behavior on several occasions.
- What part of speech is assaultive?
- Assaultive can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near assaultive in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: assaultive (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.
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Cite this entry: “assaultive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/assaultive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.