1 [U,C] ~ (on / upon sb) the crime of attacking sb physically:
Both men were charged with assault. * A significant number of indecent assaults on women go unreported. * sexual assaults
2 [C] ~ (on / upon / against sb/sth) (by an army, etc.) the act of attacking a building, an area, etc. in order to take control of it:
An assault on the capital was launched in the early hours of the morning.
3 [C] ~ (on / upon sth) the act of trying to achieve sth that is difficult or dangerous:
The government has mounted a new assault on unemployment (= in order to reduce it). * Three people died during an assault on the mountain (= while trying to climb it).
4 [C] ~ (on / upon / against sb/sth) an act of criticizing sb/sth severely:
The paper's assault on the president was totally unjustified. * The suggested closures came under assault from all parties.
verb [VN]
1 to attack sb violently, especially when this is a crime:
He has been charged with assaulting a police officer. * Four women have been sexually assaulted in the area recently.
2 (formal) to affect your senses in a way that is very unpleasant or uncomfortable:
Loud rock music assaulted our ears.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for assault is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is assault a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, assault is tagged as noun.
Does assault appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — assault appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
