onfall

plural onfalls

1. A falling on or upon; an attack, onset, or assault.

   Are we to have military onfall; and death also by starvation?

   1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (please specify the book or page number)

   3 more examples

   The onfall of the bishops had helped to wreck this possibility, [...]

   1906, William Henry Fitchett, Wesley and his century: a study in spiritual forces

   Along with your 'brethren, Get ready your scaling ladders, And your engines of onfall and assault, To attack the walls of Khung.

   2004, James Legge, The Shih King

   Six great land battles I count, with four upon the sea, and seven-and-fifty onfalls, skirmishes and bushments.

   2008, Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company

2. A fall of rain or snow.
3. The fall of the evening.

present singular third person onfalls · participle present onfalling · past onfell · participle past onfallen

1. transitiveTo fall on or upon.

   'the temple caught fire from the onfallen lightning' [...]

   1992, Edgar C. Polomé, Werner Winter, Reconstructing languages and cultures

   2 more examples

   [...] have been formed and ripened in large numbers, especially on the shaded ower sides of the leaves, the mycelium is practically exhausted, and as these processes are completed towards the end of the summer, the leaf so onfalls.

   1889, Harry Marshall Ward, Diseases of plants

   Quasivertical and quasihorizontal faults filled with crushed rocks can substantially change the amplitude of a seismic wave behind the fault in comparison with the amplitude of an onfalling wave [...]

   2008, V. V. Adushkin, Ivan Nemchinov, Catastrophic events caused by cosmic objects

2. transitiveTo assault, attack.