ground attack
- noun
- /ɡraʊnd əˈtæk/
- We will never face a large-scale ground attack or fight traditional armies.
- ground attack aircraft
I was also thinking at the time, did they have ground attacks planned?
- I was also thinking at the time, did they have ground attacks planned?
Examples
-
At the same time, however, only 30 percent of the public supports a ground attack in Gaza.
Blog text (18) -
" Now my boys are under heavy ground attack, and what if the Egyptian air force attacks them next?
Fiction book (1993) -
Now that there is movement on the ground, the ground attack will be all the more imperative.
Blog text (34) -
The realization that the threat to Israel's existence is indeed a ground attack from the east is shared by the Israeli Labor Party.
Academic text (1991) -
But the Bears' defense is pitiful and shouldn't be able to stop K-State's physical ground attack.
Blog text (17) -
Matt Forte paced the ground attack with 166 yards and two touchdowns.
Blog text (28) -
Israel will always need reasonably defensive positions there to hold back a massive ground attack with a small standing army while the Israeli reserve call-up is underway.
Academic text (1991) -
Iraqi aircraft first dropped conventional bombs and chemical weapons on unsuspecting Kurdish villages; ground attacks followed, driving the survivors to collection points situated near main roads.
Academic text (2009) -
Due to the tropical foliage, the OPLAN calls for high explosive and napalm load-outs for our ground-attack sorties.
-
The soldiers met with their commanders to discuss the upcoming ground attack on enemy positions.
How Intense
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a military attack carried out on land' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'ground' (land/solid surface) with 'attack' (a military strike). This noun-noun compound follows a regular compositional pattern found across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Ground attack comes from the picture of soldiers moving on the ground to attack the enemy, not from the sky or sea. That's why it means 'an attack carried out by ground troops'.