攻

• Military/Physical: To assault or besiege; specifically implies an attempt to breach a fortification or fixed position.
• Polemic/Intellectual: To criticize, challenge, or dismantle an argument by searching for weak points in logic.
• Disciplined Effort: To study with exhaustive rigor or work intensely toward mastering a skill.

Almost exclusively transitive; requires an object (e.g., a city, a logical position, a text).

• 攻 vs. 戰 (zhàn): 攻 implies breaching a fixed position, whereas 戰 refers to the general state of war or open-field engagement.
• 攻 vs. 擊 (jī): 擊 typically denotes a sudden blow or instantaneous strike; 攻 suggests a prolonged, systematic process of overcoming resistance.
• Relation to 功 (gōng): There is a thematic link between the act of effort/assault (攻) and the resulting merit or achievement (功).