attack
verb (used with object)
to set upon in a forceful, violent, hostile, or aggressive way, with or without a weapon; begin fighting with.
was attacking
-
past progressiveof attack.past progressive
Used to describe an ongoing action or continuous state that was happening at a specific time in the past.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Tehran had earlier said it was attacking US assets in the country.
From Barron's ● Jul. 21, 2026
“It will get a lot easier to attack random pieces of infrastructure that no one was attacking before,” said Thomas Ptacek, a security researcher who is a principal at the cloud computing company Fly.io.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 14, 2026
With his breath condensing in clouds in temperatures double figures below zero, a foreman summed the attitude that is common here, when I asked him why Russia was attacking them.
From BBC ● Feb. 24, 2026
“We did a nice job there early in the game kind of getting the lead,” quarterback Matthew Stafford said, “and then our defense just went crazy and was attacking the quarterback.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 14, 2025
The tree they had hit was attacking them.
From "Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets" by J. K. Rowling
