attacker(VIOLENT PERSON)

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Attacking & invading
advance guard
ambush
beleaguer
beleaguered
besiege
blitz
cyberbullying
cyberwarfare
declare war on someone/something
false flag
foray
full-frontal assault
hit and run
pincer movement
post-attack
post-conquest
pre-emption
privateer
surgical strike
swoop

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Arguing & disagreeing

Examples from literature

It is said that, as a rule, the aggressors are victorious, for rarely do they attack an enemy that is too strongly entrenched. 
It was the aggressors themselves that were now under cross fire, and they relished it very little. 
The chances are that the aggressor would come off worst. 
The natives find that they are men like themselves, and that their intrusion is an injury, and they perhaps become the aggressors in provoking hostilities. 
The result was a duel, in which the aggressor was wounded. 

aggressor | American Dictionary

aggressor
noun[ C ]
us/əˈɡres·ər/
a person, group, or country that starts an argument, fight, or war by attacking first:
He claimed that he was just defending himself, and that the other guy was the aggressor.

Examples of aggressor

aggressor
It is thus of particular importance to be ready at all times to subject the aggressor to an annihilating defeat.
The result is that perceived aggressor states need to reassure others about their intentions.
In the case of the aggressor, force is justified only if there is no other way of avoiding the danger.
In ethological terms, such fulsome compliance should halt the need of aggressors to continue their attack.
The cause of the conflict in the vignette was ambiguous, with neither vignette character being identified as an aggressor or as a victim.
Peers' perceptions of the consequences that victimized children provide aggressors.
On the other hand, the worst violators of human rights tend to be the world's aggressors and proliferators.
The police officer identified more with the aggressor than with the victim.
Can any one of them use deadly force to repel the aggressor's non-deadly attacks?
In contrast, premeditated aggression is situationally related and self-promoting and generally serves to aid the aggressor.
More often than not, the aggressor baring teeth is female.
The presumed aggressor need not actually be threatening unlawful, imminent, and deadly harm.
Although walking away may not be an active form of defense, this passive, nonconfrontational strategy may discourage aggressors' attacks and, thus, decrease future victimization.
Protection from outside aggressors is central to this scheme.
For example, selfdefense is legitimate in order to repel an aggressor.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.