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An assailant is the person who attacks someone. You hear it from police and news readers: “her assailant ran off,” “the assailant has not been identified.” It is a cold, formal noun for a very physical thing — hitting, grabbing, coming at a person. Friends would say the man who attacked me; assailant puts a suit on that idea. It does not mean a soldier in a war (that is usually attacker or the enemy), and it does not mean a killer by trade. It is the someone in this incident who did the attacking. The word tells you there was an attack; it does not tell you with what, or why.
襲擊者、行兇者
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
assailantnoun/əˈseɪlənt/
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Someone who attacks or assails another violently, or criminally.
- 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.
- […] 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.
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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.
assailantadj/əˈseɪlənt/
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Assailing; attacking.
- 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.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。