assailant

From Old French assaillant, from the verb assaillir, from Late Latin assalīre, from Latin ad (“to, towards”) + salīre (“to jump”). Equivalent to assail +‎ -ant.

• IPA^(key): /əˈseɪlənt/

assailant (plural assailants)

1. Someone who attacks or assails another violently, or criminally.

   Synonym: attacker

   • c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii]:

     I’ll put myself in poor and mean attire,
     And with a kind of umber smirch my face;
     The like do you; so shall we pass along,
     And never stir assailants.

   • 1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 2, in The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano‎, volume 1, London: for the author, page 47:

     […] commonly some of us used to get up a tree to look out for any assailant, or kidnapper, that might come upon us; for they sometimes took those opportunities of our parents absence to attack and carry off as many as they could seize.

   • 1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 17, in My Bondage and My Freedom. […], New York, Auburn, N.Y.: Miller, Orton & Mulligan […], →OCLC, part I (Life as a Slave), page 244:

     […] just as he leaned over to get the stick, I seized him with both hands by the collar, and, with a vigorous and sudden snatch, I brought my assailant harmlessly, his full length, on the not over clean ground—for we were now in the cow yard.

   • 1935, Christopher Isherwood, chapter 8, in Mr. Norris Changes Trains‎, Penguin, published 1961, page 89:

     In the middle of a crowded street a young man would be attacked, stripped, thrashed, and left bleeding on the pavement; in fifteen seconds it was all over and the assailants had disappeared.

   • 2018, Edo Konrad, “Living in the constant shadow of settler violence”, in +972 Magazine:

     In the village of Aqraba, the Sheikh Saadeh Mosque was set on fire before the assailants graffitied the words “price tag” and “revenge” on its walls.

2. (figuratively, by extension) A hostile critic or opponent.
   • 1782, Frances Burney, Cecilia, London: T. Payne and Son and T. Cadell, Volume 5, Book 9, Chapter 3, p. 41,

     […] the assailants of the quill have their honour as much at heart as the assailants of the sword.

assailant (not comparable)

1. Assailing; attacking.
   • 1671, John Milton, Samson Agonistes, line 1687 to 1696:

     But he though blind of sight, / Despis'd, and thought extinguish'd quite, / With inward eyes illuminated, / His fiery virtue roused / From under ashes into sudden flame, / And as an evening dragon came, / Assailant on the perched roosts / And nests in order ranged / Of tame villatic fowl, but as an eagle / His cloudless thunder bolted on their heads.

• Alsatians, alsatians