preventive attack

1. 1.

   a strike that is carried out in order to deter expected aggression by hostile forces

   Synonymspreventive strike

   Broaderstrike

Questions about preventive attack

What does preventive attack mean?

preventive attack means "a strike that is carried out in order to deter expected aggression by hostile forces".

What is another word for preventive attack?

Close synonyms include preventive strike. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is preventive attack a common word?

preventive attack 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.