attack

Meanings

Noun

• An attempt to cause damage, injury to, or death of opponent or enemy.
• An attempt to detract from the worth or credibility of, a person, position, idea, object, or thing, by physical, verbal, emotional, or other assault.
• A time in which one attacks; the offence of a battle.
• The beginning of active operations on anything.
• An attempt to exploit a vulnerability in a computer system.
• Collectively, the bowlers of a cricket side.
• Any contact with the ball other than a serve or block which sends the ball across the plane of the net.
• The three attackmen on the field or all the attackmen of a team.
• The sudden onset of a disease or condition.
• An active episode of a chronic or recurrent disease.
• The onset of a musical note, particularly with respect to the strength (and duration) of that onset.
• The amount of time it takes 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).

Verb

• To apply violent force to someone or something.
• To aggressively challenge a person, idea, etc., with words (particularly in newspaper headlines, because it typesets into less space than "criticize" or similar).
• To begin to affect; to act upon injuriously or destructively; to begin to decompose or waste.
• To deal with something in a direct way; to set to work upon.
• To aim balls at the batsman’s wicket.
• To set a field, or bowl in a manner designed to get wickets.
• To bat aggressively, so as to score runs quickly.
• To move forward in an active attempt to score a point, as opposed to trying not to concede.
• To accelerate quickly in an attempt to get ahead of the other riders.
• (Of a chemical species) To approach a chemical species or bond in order to form a bond with it.

Related

Narrower meaning words

• arson attack
• birthday attack
• cryptanalytic attack
• cryptographic attack
• cyberattack, cyber-attack
• man-in-the-middle attack
• pincer attack
• preimage attack
• second-preimage attack
• smudge attack

Origin

• Borrowed from French attaque, derived from the verb attaquer, from Italian attaccare (used in attaccare battaglia), from Frankish *stakka. attach.