Resembling or having the characteristics of an ambush; resembling a surprise attack or hidden trap.
Compound of ambush (from Old French embuscher, 'to place in a bush') + -like (Old English -lic, 'having the form of'). The suffix -like was added to create an adjective meaning 'in the manner of' an ambush.
This word appears rarely in military and literary texts, but it reveals how English speakers create new descriptive words on the fly—the -like suffix is one of our most productive word-building tools, letting us compare anything to anything else.
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