Noun

(en noun)

an advance into enemy territory, an incursion, an attempted invasion

* 1776 : Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol 1

The brave and active Contsantius delivered Gaul from a very furious inroad of the Alemanni;

*1850 , '', ''The present time

*:And everywhere the people, or the populace, take their own government upon themselves; and open “kinglessness,” what we call anarchy , […] is everywhere the order of the day. Such was the history, from Baltic to Mediterranean, in Italy, France, Prussia, Austria, from end to end of Europe, in those March days of 1848. Since the destruction of the old Roman Empire by inroad of the Northern Barbarians, I have known nothing similar.

* 1910 : G. K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World

... our whole great commercial system breaks down. It is breaking down, under the inroad of women who are adopting the unprecedented and impossible course of taking the system seriously and doing it well.

(usually plural) progress made toward accomplishing a goal or solving a problem

* 1983 : Scarecrow and Mrs. King (TV, episode 1.03)

You must have been fairly surprised at Dr. Glaser's inroads into reprogramming the brain.

Noun

(en noun)

An attempt to cause damage or injury to, or to somehow detract from the worth or credibility of, a person, position, idea, object, or thing, by physical, verbal, emotional, or other assault.

* {{quote-book, year=1913, author=

, title=Lord Stranleigh Abroad , chapter=4 citation , passage=“I came down like a wolf on the fold, didn’t I??? Why didn’t I telephone??? Strategy, my dear boy, strategy. This is a surprise attack , and I’d no wish that the garrison, forewarned, should escape. …”}}

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-19, author= Mark Tran

, volume=189, issue=6, page=1, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Denied an education by war , passage=One particularly damaging, but often ignored, effect of conflict on education is the proliferation of attacks' on schools

A time in which one attacks. The offence of a battle.

(cricket) Collectively, the bowlers of a cricket side.

(volleyball) Any contact with the ball other than a serve or block which sends the ball across the plane of the net.

(lacrosse) The three attackmen on the field or all the attackmen of a team.

The sudden onset of a disease.

An active episode of a chronic or recurrent disease.

(music) The onset of a musical note, particularly with respect to the strength (and duration) of that onset.

(audio) The amount of time it takes for the volume of an audio signal to go from zero to maximum level (e.g. an audio waveform representing a snare drum hit would feature a very fast attack, whereas that of a wave washing to shore would feature a slow attack).