on the offensive

1. 1.

   actively attacking

   Similaroffensive

Questions about on the offensive

What does on the offensive mean?

on the offensive means "actively attacking".

Is on the offensive a common word?

on the offensive is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.