What's the difference between assault and onslaught?

Assault


Definition:

  • (n.) A violent onset or attack with physical means, as blows, weapons, etc.; an onslaught; the rush or charge of an attacking force; onset; as, to make assault upon a man, a house, or a town.
  • (n.) A violent onset or attack with moral weapons, as words, arguments, appeals, and the like; as, to make an assault on the prerogatives of a prince, or on the constitution of a government.
  • (n.) An apparently violent attempt, or willful offer with force or violence, to do hurt to another; an attempt or offer to beat another, accompanied by a degree of violence, but without touching his person, as by lifting the fist, or a cane, in a threatening manner, or by striking at him, and missing him. If the blow aimed takes effect, it is a battery.
  • (n.) To make an assault upon, as by a sudden rush of armed men; to attack with unlawful or insulting physical violence or menaces.
  • (n.) To attack with moral means, or with a view of producing moral effects; to attack by words, arguments, or unfriendly measures; to assail; as, to assault a reputation or an administration.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) DI James Faulkner of Great Manchester police said: “The men and women working in the factory have told us that they were subjected to physical and verbal assaults at the hands of their employers and forced to work more than 80-hours before ending up with around £25 for their week’s work.
  • (2) The author's experience in private psychoanalytic practice and in Philadelphia's rape victim clinics indicates that these assaults occur frequently.
  • (3) Although the group is constantly the target of an all-out political assault, it has a robust national fundraising operation that allows it to subsidize abortions for poor women and expand to new locations.
  • (4) The attitudes and practices of 96 doctors toward spousal assault victims in the Australian Capital Territory, Australia, were investigated by questionnaire surveys distributed to general practitioners.
  • (5) Some have been threatened and assaulted, while others’ homes have been ransacked, their families living in constant fear.
  • (6) I was amazed by the sheer scale of the operation, easily mistaken for a full military assault on a kraken.
  • (7) After Mousa's death, the surviving detainees were subjected to further assaults.
  • (8) Some 300 million women and girls are forced to defecate outside, exposed not only to the risks of disease and bacterial infection, but also harassment and assault by men.
  • (9) Alcohol use appeared to be a significant ingredient in the production of the assaultive behavior in the majority of the cases.
  • (10) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trump ‘sways malevolently’ behind Hillary Clinton Instead, he began the night by assembling a group of women in a press conference to revisit alleged sexual assaults by Bill Clinton, before confronting his opponent hardest on her private email server.
  • (11) It is Vine who initiated this latest assault on Ed’s character.
  • (12) Sexual assault of women in the United States may have a prevalence rate of 25% or more.
  • (13) Inevitably, and necessarily, Labour has appeared split as the coalition has captured broad public support for its assault on the deficit.
  • (14) Reports of violence associated with delusional misidentification are reviewed and four patients described who were either perpetrators or victims of assaults as a consequence of the syndromes of Frégoli, Intermetamorphosis, Subjective Doubles and Capgras.
  • (15) It is believed that many women have yet to report assaults, and police appealed for people who had not already done so to come forward.
  • (16) Beatings with metal bars and cables were followed by so-called “security checks”, during which women in particular were subjected to rape and sexual assault by male guards.
  • (17) The retired judge’s report outlines multiple rapes and indecent assaults on children by Savile, which she claims were all “in some way associated with the BBC”.
  • (18) Sexual assault victims (1,059) under the age of 17 were evaluated over a period of 44 months in a teaching, metropolitan county emergency room.
  • (19) As Bradford University professor Paul Rogers told Jones, the bombing of Mali "will be portrayed as 'one more example of an assault on Islam'".
  • (20) It doesn't surprise me that a man whose hit song sounded like an assault anthem and featured a video full of naked models would attempt to get back his wife via public pressure and a threatening music video.

Onslaught


Definition:

  • (n.) An attack; an onset; esp., a furious or murderous attack or assault.
  • (n.) A bloody fray or battle.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) To a supporter at the last election like me – someone who spoke alongside Nick Clegg at the curtain-raiser event for the party conference during the height of Labour's onslaught on civil liberties, and was assured privately by two leaders that the party was onside about civil liberties – this breach of trust and denial of principle is astonishing.
  • (2) It is the sort of malevolent onslaught that has caused many hardened media pundits to quake.
  • (3) Every couple of years, evidence emerges to underline the unparalleled nature of the state onslaught and ruthless rule-breaking to overcome resistance in the mining communities, bought at a cost of £37bn in today's prices .
  • (4) Even the deep cuts of the IMF visit period in the mid-1970s or Margaret Thatcher's spending onslaught of the early 1980s will have been less dramatic than what now lies ahead.
  • (5) My partner and I withstood the onslaught, but eventually the relationship crumbled under the pressure.
  • (6) Miraculously, it survived the various onslaughts, including a Supreme Court challenge, more or less intact and it should make a significant difference to women's health (pdf).
  • (7) Vastly outnumbered by the Kremlin's ground and air forces, the Georgian government announced it was pulling back its troops to defend the capital, Tbilisi, against a feared Russian onslaught.
  • (8) The late onslaught was the only spell in the entire match when Watford had attacked with any real momentum.
  • (9) It’s the continual onslaught that will eventually kill the reef.
  • (10) The way western politicians and media have pontificated about Israel's onslaught on Gaza, you'd think it was facing an unprovoked attack from a well-armed foreign power.
  • (11) The onslaught was triggered by the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr , a critic of the Saudi monarchy.
  • (12) The party still faces a barrage of tactical voting by the right and left to stop it winning final-round votes – described by one Lille party worker as “the onslaught of an armada”.
  • (13) The experts have always known they must make their work watertight against such an onslaught, and every conclusion made by the IPCC must pass scrutiny by all of the world's governments before it can be published.
  • (14) Today it is the BBC taking the onslaught as Dame Janet Smith’s report highlights decades of sexual abuse carried out by Jimmy Savile under the noses of senior managers – whom Smith kindly clears because they “generally did not hear rumours”.
  • (15) Amnesty International has called it an “onslaught on dissent” in the runup to elections next year.
  • (16) As the new year begins, Erdoğan appears set on strengthening his grip on power, by both democratic and undemocratic means, and pursuing his onslaught against the Kurds inside Turkey and in Syria.
  • (17) Determined to keep his party together ahead of an expected onslaught by MPs opposing the outline deal, Tsipras summoned his finance minister, Euclid Tsakalotos, and Nikos Filis, representative of the Syriza parliamentary group, to the Athens meeting, before a gathering of his parliamentary party on Tuesday.
  • (18) They took peaceful action on behalf of us all, standing up against destructive Arctic oil drilling and the onslaught of climate change.
  • (19) The strange thing is that the late onslaught that might have been expected never really materialised.
  • (20) This latest set of proposals is one part of a massive onslaught by Gordon Brown's hyperactive government on the recession.

Words possibly related to "onslaught"