All 5 Uses of
assail
in
Moby Dick
- All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick.†
Chpt 40-42 *standard suffix: The suffix "-able" means able to be. This is the same pattern you see in words like breakable, understandable, and comfortable.
- In more than one instance, he has been known, not only to chase the assailing boats back to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long withstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks.†
Chpt 43-45assailing = attacking
- Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan coming that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the ladies, with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases him away!†
Chpt 88-90assails = attacks
- So soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was assailed by yells and execrations from the crew.†
Chpt 91-93assailed = attacked
- No wonder there had been some among the hunters who namelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured to assail it; but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture of tornadoes.†
Chpt 133-135assail = attack
Definition:
to attack or cause trouble