Onfall

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A falling on or upon; an attack, onset, or assault.

    "Are we to have military onfall; and death also by starvation?"

  2. 2
    A fall of rain or snow.
  3. 3
    The fall of the evening.
Verb
  1. 1
    To fall on or upon. transitive

    "[...] 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."

  2. 2
    To assault, attack. transitive

Synonyms

All synonyms
assaultassaultattackbeat

Example

More examples

"Are we to have military onfall; and death also by starvation?"

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”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.