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SET ON
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (verb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Attack someone physically or emotionally
Example:
Nightmares assailed him regularly
Synonyms:
assail; assault; attack; set on
Classified under:
Verbs of fighting, athletic activities
Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "set on"):
bait (attack with dogs or set dogs upon)
set; sic (urge to attack someone)
bulldog (attack viciously and ferociously)
rush (attack suddenly)
blindside (attack or hit on or from the side where the attacked person's view is obstructed)
savage (attack brutally and fiercely)
reassail (assail again)
jump (make a sudden physical attack on)
beset; set upon (assail or attack on all sides:)
assault; dishonor; dishonour; outrage; rape; ravish; violate (force (someone) to have sex against their will)
desecrate; outrage; profane; violate (violate the sacred character of a place or language)
molest (harass or assault sexually; make indecent advances to)
Sentence frames:
Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody
Something ----s somebody
Context examples:
I fell on my knees, and begged the honour of kissing her imperial foot; but this gracious princess held out her little finger towards me, after I was set on the table, which I embraced in both my arms, and put the tip of it with the utmost respect to my lip.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
For if, in its perihelion, it should approach within a certain degree of the sun (as by their calculations they have reason to dread) it will receive a degree of heat ten thousand times more intense than that of red hot glowing iron, and in its absence from the sun, carry a blazing tail ten hundred thousand and fourteen miles long, through which, if the earth should pass at the distance of one hundred thousand miles from the nucleus, or main body of the comet, it must in its passage be set on fire, and reduced to ashes: that the sun, daily spending its rays without any nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed and annihilated; which must be attended with the destruction of this earth, and of all the planets that receive their light from it.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
