Meaning

2 senses
  1. A fierce attack.

    Angriff, Ansturm, Strum

    на́тискnátisk

    на́тискnátysk

  2. (broadly)A large number of people or things resembling an attack.

    They opened the doors and prepared for the onslaught of holiday shoppers.

    наплы́вnaplýv, на́тискnátisk

More definitions
  • a sudden and severe onset of trouble
  • (military) an offensive against an enemy (using weapons)
  • the rapid and continuous delivery of linguistic communication (spoken or written)

Examples

4 sentences
  1. The defenders checked the onslaught by the attackers.

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  2. Spain is reeling under the onslaught of the coronavirus.

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  3. Ziri was fighting a losing battle against an onslaught of snow.

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  4. My email feed is a non stop onslaught of programming and language learning content.

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Translations

9 languages
Українська
By meaning 1
fierce attack:
Русский
By meaning 2
fierce attack:
large quantity of people or things resembling an attack:
Deutsch
By meaning 1
fierce attack:

Origin

From on- + slaught. Formed after Middle Dutch aenslag, aenslach, equivalent to aen + slag,

From on- + slaught. Formed after Middle Dutch aenslag, aenslach, equivalent to aen + slag, although slaught corresponds to Middle Dutch slacht; slag is cognate with the English weaving term sley. Compare Dutch aanslag and German Anschlag.

Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source

Forms

plural: onslaughts

Synonyms

6 synonyms
Close in meaning

Word family

2 related words
Relatedslew

See also

neighbours in the dictionary
onslaught — meaning, examples, forms, synonyms | Krumeto