Other forms: assailed, assailing, assails
To assail is to attack violently, whether with blows or with words. Coming at somebody hard and from all sides.
The word is formal and literary, and it is commoner in the passive, as in assailed by critics or assailed by doubts. That last pattern is the most useful one, since feelings and smells assail people in writing far more often than fists do. The noun assailant means an attacker and is standard in police reports. Assault is the everyday word for the physical version.
1verbassailTo attack violently, physically or with words.
“He was assailed by questions the moment he walked in.”
To assail is to leap at. Latin ad, towards, joins saliō, to jump, and assault comes from the same leap.
Proto-Indo-European
*sel-
Latin
assalio
Old French
assalir
Middle English
assailen
English, today
assail
Built from
From Middle English assailen, from Old French assalir, from Latin assalio, from Latin ad (“at, towards”) + saliō (“jump”). See also assault.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA