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In law, assault is a crime that involves causing a victim to apprehend violence.

The term is often confused with battery, which involves physical contact.

The specific meaning of assault varies between countries, but can refer to an act that causes another to apprehend immediate and personal violence, or in the more limited sense of a threat of violence caused by an immediate show of force.

Assault in some US jurisdictions is defined more broadly still as any intentional physical contact with another person without their consent ; but in the majority of the United States, and in England and Wales and all other common law jurisdictions in the world, this is defined instead as battery.

Some jurisdictions have incorporated the definition of civil assault into the definition of the crime making it a criminal assault to intentionally cause another person to apprehend a harmful or offensive contact.