Noun

(en noun)

A rushing or setting upon; an attack; an assault; a storming; especially, the assault of an army.

* (rfdate) (William Shakespeare),

The onset and retire / Of both your armies.

* (rfdate) (William Wordsworth),

Who on that day the word of onset gave.

(medicine) The initial phase of a disease or condition, in which symptoms first become apparent.

(phonology) The initial portion of a syllable, preceding the syllable nucleus.

(acoustics) The beginning of a musical note or other sound, in which the amplitude rises from zero to an initial peak.

(obsolete) A setting about; a beginning.

* (rfdate) (Francis Bacon),

There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things.

(obsolete) Anything set on, or added, as an ornament or as a useful appendage.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-29, volume=407, issue=8842, page=28, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= High and wet , passage=Floods in northern India, mostly in the small state of Uttarakhand, have wrought disaster on an enormous scale. The early, intense onset of the monsoon on June 14th swelled rivers, washing away roads, bridges, hotels and even whole villages. Rock-filled torrents smashed vehicles and homes, burying victims under rubble and sludge.}}

(Shakespeare)

(Johnson)

Noun

(en noun)

The act of arriving or something that has arrived.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=5 , passage=We made an odd party before the arrival of the Ten, particularly when the Celebrity dropped in for lunch or dinner.}}

* {{quote-book, year=1922, author=(Ben Travers)

, chapter=5, title= A Cuckoo in the Nest , passage=The most rapid and most seductive transition in all human nature is that which attends the palliation of a ravenous appetite.

The attainment of an objective, especially as a result of effort.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Out of the gloom , passage=[Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian villages is long overdue. When the national grid suffers its next huge outage, as it did in July 2012 when hundreds of millions were left in the dark, look for specks of light in the villages.}}