Word.ws English Dictionary

preattack

preattack adjective: before an attack.

Adjective

preattack (not comparable)

  1. Before an attack.
    • White House complaints that homeland defense would be threatened are, in fact, contradicted by the history of 9/11 and the F.B.I. field agent whose preattack warnings to superiors went unheeded.2007 December 27, “Protection for Endangered Whistle-Blowers”, in New York Times
    • In contrast to cyberprotection, cyberresilience anticipates that a cyberattack will succeed. It has in place methods for rapid detection, cushioning the effects and quickly restoring systems to their pre-attack state.2022 September 30, Michael Coden, “Letters: Against Cyberattacks”, in The New York Times

Forms of preattack

alternative formpre-attack

Origin of preattack

From pre- + attack.

Questions about preattack

What does preattack mean?
Preattack means before an attack.
What part of speech is preattack?
Preattack is an adjective.

Words near preattack in the dictionary

  1. preatomic
  2. preatrial
  3. preatrium
  4. preattached
  5. preattachment
  6. preattack
  7. preattend
  8. preattended
  9. preattending
  10. preattends
  11. preattention

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: preattack (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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