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To strike against; to attack; to assail. [Obs.] Sir P. Sidney.

Making the first attack; assailant; aggressive; hence, used in attacking; -- opposed to defensive; as, an offensive war; offensive weapons. League offensive and defensive, a leaque that requires all the parties to it to make war together against any foe, and to defend one another if attacked.

atin, doceor, I am taught; in English, she is loved; the picture is admired by all; he is assailed by slander.

To assail with noise or loud sounds. Nor was his ear less pealed. Milton.

To strike with something thrown or driven; to assail with pellets or missiles, as, to pelt with stones; pelted with hail. The children billows seem to pelt the clouds. Shak.

ble road. Practicable breach (Mil.), a breach which admits of approach and entrance by an assailing party.

A variety of pyroxene; -- called also fassaite.

To commit rape upon; to ravish. raped first by their assailant, and then by the Justice system. Corresponds to 2nd rape, n. 5. To rape and ren. See under Rap, v. t., to snatch.

To assail, annoy, or stun with a ratting noise. Sound but another [drum], and another shall As loud as thine rattle the welkin's ear. Shak.

ace to which one repairs; a haunt; a resort. [R.] There the fierce winds his tender force assail And beat him downward to his first repair. Dryden.

back; to force to return; to check the advance of; to repulse as, to repel an enemy or an assailant. Hippomedon repelled the hostile tide. Pope. They repelled each other strongly, and yet attracted each other strongly. Macaulay.

l retail my conquest won." Shak. He is wit's peddler, and retails his wares At wakes and wassails. Shak.

d for the sentinels to forbear challenging. "Sound a reveille." Dryden. For at dawning to assail ye Here no bugles sound reveille. Sir W. Scott.

To treat or address with derision; to assail scornfully; to mock at. To scoff religion is ridiculously proud and immodest. Glanwill.

whom a grave wrong is attempted to resist the wrong, even at the peril of the life of the assailiant. Wharton.

dearly, to cause much loss to those who take one's life, as by killing a number of one's assailants. -- To sell (anything) out, to dispose of it wholly or entirely; as, he had sold out his corn, or his interest in a business.

cxxi. 5. Sleep under a fresh tree's shade. Shak. Let the arched knife well sharpened now assail the spreading shades of vegetables. J. Philips.

rply to be chastised and reformed than the rude Irish. Spenser. The soldiers were sharply assailed with wants. Hayward. You contract your eye when you would see sharply. Bacon.

grated; resolution; disintegration. It is unquestionably an enterprise of more promise to assail the nations in their hour of faintness and solution, than at a time when magnificent and seductive systems of worship were at their height of energy and splendor. I. Taylor.

sist successfully. She will not stay the siege of loving terms, Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes. Shak.