assailment

plural assailments

1. archaiccountableuncountableThe act of assailing.

   Meanwhile, during all this puzzlement, those unpleasant waves, biological ripple upon nasty ripple, kept up assailment on my legs and backbone.

   2018, Anna Burns, Milkman, London: Faber & Faber, Part 3

   4 more examples

   Outward conjectures may bee drawne of his [Christ’s] neere approching, […] but the period of time, […] as vncertaine, as is the day, moneth, yeare of the theeues assailment vnto the housholder.

   1595, Henoch Clapham, Sommons to Doomes Daie, Edinburgh: Robert Waldegrave, pages 41–42

   I opened it [the letter] not without feare and assailement of my senses, knowing that it must haue beene some serious occasion, which could moue her to write vnto me,

   1612, Thomas Shelton, transl., The History of the Valorous and Wittie Knight-errant, Don-Quixote of the Mancha, Part 3, Chapter 13, pp. 269-270

   Thus, Martin learned in the five minutes’ straggling talk about the stove, that to carry pistols into legislative assemblies, and swords in sticks, and other such peaceful toys; to seize opponents by the throat, as dogs or rats might do; to bluster, bully, and overbear by personal assailment; were glowing deeds.

   1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, chapter 16, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC, page 207

   […] seeing her extraordinary beauty, and forestalling the dangers and temptations into which the possession of such exceptional charms might lead her, she adopted a wise preventive course, that cased her as it were in armour, proof against all the assailments of flattery.

   1887, Marie Corelli, chapter 16, in Thelma,, volume 2, London: Richard Bentley, page 40

   Synonyms: assault, attack