Attacking

How to spell attacking

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce attacking

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does attacking mean?

1. verbCarrying out a violent or aggressive assault on someone or something.
2. adjectiveAggressive and offensive in style, especially in sport or tactics.

Attacking in a sentence

• verb

  The documentary showed lions attacking a lone buffalo at the waterhole.

• adjective

  The coach favoured an attacking formation that pushed everyone forward.

• verb

  Hackers were attacking the company servers throughout the night.

• adjective

  Her attacking play at the net unsettled every opponent.

Where does attacking come from?

Language of origin: Italian

The base verb attack came into English in the early 1600s from the French attaquer, which was itself borrowed from the Italian attaccare, meaning 'to attach' or 'to join'. The fuller phrase attaccare battaglia literally meant 'to join battle', and over time the 'join battle' sense narrowed into the modern idea of assaulting or assailing. The same Italian root also gave English the gentler word attach, so attack and attach are close cousins that simply went in opposite directions, one toward conflict and one toward fastening. The participle form attacking adds the ordinary English ending -ing to that borrowed stem. A useful spelling note: the word keeps the hard 'k' sound with the letters ck before the ending, and there is only a single t, not a double one.

How the word is built

• attack (from Italian attaccare, to attach/join battle)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)