Skip to content
ontologydriven
Sign out

Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

onfall en · NOUN

Etymology

From Middle English onfal, onfalle, equivalent to on- + fall. Cognate with Dutch aanval (“an attack, assault”), German Anfall (“an attack, seizure, fit”), Swedish anfall (“an attack, offensive, assault”). Compare also Middle English onfallynge (“an onslaught, attack”).

Meanings

  1. A falling on or upon; an attack, onset, or assault.
    • Six great land battles I count, with four upon the sea, and seven-and-fifty onfalls, skirmishes and bushments. 2008, Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company:
    • Along with your 'brethren, Get ready your scaling ladders, And your engines of onfall and assault, To attack the walls of Khung. 2004, James Legge, The Shih King:
    • Are we to have military onfall; and death also by starvation? 1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (please specify the book or page number):
    • The onfall of the bishops had helped to wreck this possibility, [...] 1906, William Henry Fitchett, Wesley and his century: a study in spiritual forces:
  2. A fall of rain or snow.
  3. The fall of the evening.

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
onfalls Number=Plur lexicographic

onfall en · VERB

Etymology

From Middle English onfal, onfalle, equivalent to on- + fall. Cognate with Dutch aanval (“an attack, assault”), German Anfall (“an attack, seizure, fit”), Swedish anfall (“an attack, offensive, assault”). Compare also Middle English onfallynge (“an onslaught, attack”).

Meanings

  1. (transitive) To fall on or upon.
    • [...] have been formed and ripened in large numbers, especially on the shaded ower sides of the leaves, the mycelium is practically exhausted, and as these processes are completed towards the end of the summer, the leaf so onfalls. 1889, Harry Marshall Ward, Diseases of plants:
    • 'the temple caught fire from the onfallen lightning' [...] 1992, Edgar C. Polomé, Werner Winter, Reconstructing languages and cultures:
    • Quasivertical and quasihorizontal faults filled with crushed rocks can substantially change the amplitude of a seismic wave behind the fault in comparison with the amplitude of an onfalling wave [...] 2008, V. V. Adushkin, Ivan Nemchinov, Catastrophic events caused by cosmic objects:
  2. (transitive) To assault, attack.

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
onfell Tense=Past lexicographic
onfalling Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
onfallen Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
onfalls Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres lexicographic