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attack

Pronunciation: /əˈtæk/

The English word “attack” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. An attempt to cause damage, injury to, or death of an opponent or enemy.
  2. Any of several specific maneuvers, skills, or special abilities that a character can use to inflict damage against opponents.
  3. An attempt to detract from the worth or credibility of, a person, position, idea, object, or thing, by physical, verbal, emotional, or other assault.
  4. A time in which one attacks; the offence of a battle.
  5. The beginning of active operations on anything.
  6. An attempt to exploit a vulnerability in a computer system.
  7. Collectively, the bowlers of a cricket side.
  8. Any contact with the ball other than a serve or block which sends the ball across the plane of the net.
  9. The three attackmen on the field or all the attackmen of a team.
  10. The sudden onset of a disease or condition.
  11. An active episode of a chronic or recurrent disease.
  12. The onset of a musical note, particularly with respect to the strength (and duration) of that onset.
  13. The amount of time taken for the volume of an audio signal to go from zero to maximum level (e.g. an audio waveform representing a snare drum hit would feature a very fast attack, whereas that of a wave washing to shore would feature a slow attack).
  14. The initial sensory impact of a wine.

verb

  1. To apply violent force to someone or something.
  2. To aggressively challenge a person, idea, etc., with words (particularly in newspaper headlines, because it typesets into less space than "criticize" or similar).
  3. To begin to affect; to act upon injuriously or destructively; to begin to decompose or waste.
  4. To deal with something in a direct way; to set to work upon.
  5. To aim balls at the batsman’s wicket.
  6. To set a field, or bowl in a manner designed to get wickets.

Etymology

Borrowed from French attaque, derived from the verb attaquer, from Italian attaccare (“to join, attach”) (used in attaccare battaglia (“to join battle”)), from Frankish *stakkijan (“to stick, stick to, attach”). Doublet of attach. Displaced native Middle English onresen, from Old English onrǣsan (“to attack”); and Middle English resinge (“an assault, attack”) (compare Old English onrǣs (“an…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.