Search the Dictionary

To sprinkle, as water or dust, upon anybody or anything, or to besprinkle any one with a liquid or with dust. Heywood.

To grub up, as trees; to commit an assart upon; as, to assart land or trees. Ashmole.

An assassination, murder, or murderous assault. [Obs.] If I had made an assassinate upon your father. B. Jonson.

etc.; an onslaught; the rush or charge of an attacking force; onset; as, to make assault upon a man, a house, or a town. The Spanish general prepared to renew the assault. Prescott. Unshaken bears the assault Of their most dreaded foe, the strong southwest. Wordsworth.

a person, a community, or an estate), in the nature of a tax, fine, etc.; to impose a tax upon (a person, an estate, or an income) according to a rate or apportionment.

n; solemn declaration. Another abuse of the tongue I might add, -- vehement asseverations upon slight and trivial occasions. Ray.

A verdict or finding of a jury upon such writ.

To take to or upon one's self; to take formally and demonstratively; sometimes, to appropriate or take unjustly. Trembling they stand while Jove assumes the throne. Pope. The god assumed his native form again. Pope.

Pretentious; taking much upon one's self; presumptuous. Burke.

The act of assuming, or taking to or upon one's self; the act of taking up or adopting. The assumption of authority. Whewell.

ilder; to astonish; to dismay. [Archaic] The captain of the Helots . . . strake Palladius upon the side of his head, that he reeled astonied. Sir P. Sidney. This sodeyn cas this man astonied so, That reed he wex, abayst, and al quaking. Chaucer.

voke by prayer. Dryden. Astral lamp, an Argand lamp so constructed that no shadow is cast upon the table by the flattened ring-shaped reservoir in which the oil is contained. -- Astral spirits, spirits formerly supposed to live in the heavenly bodies or the aërial regions, and represented in the Middle Ages as fallen…

as a man when on horseback; with the legs stretched wide apart; astraddle. Placed astride upon the bars of the palisade. Sir W. Scott. Glasses with horn bows sat astride on his nose. Longfellow.

ynonymous with astronomy; subsequently, the art of judging of the influences of the stars upon human affairs, and of foretelling events by their position and aspects.

The influence of a star upon other stars or upon men. [Obs.] Chaucer.

To fall upon with force; to assail, as with force and arms; to assault. "Attack their lines." Dryden.

eing attainted; the extinction of the civil rights and capacities of a person, consequent upon sentence of death or outlawry; as, an act of attainder. Abbott.

nd guilty; to convict; -- said esp. of a jury on trial for giving a false verdict. [Obs.] Upon sufficient proof attainted of some open act by men of his own condition. Blackstone.

To attack; to make an effort or attack upon; to try to take by force; as, to attempt the enemy's camp. Without attempting his adversary's life. Motley.

To direct the attention to; to fix the mind upon; to give heed to; to regard. [Obs.] The diligent pilot in a dangerous tempest doth not attend the unskillful words of the passenger. Sir P. Sidney.