From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishdawn raidˌdawn ˈraid noun [countable] PMan attack or operation by soldiers or police that happens very early in the morning
Examples from the Corpus
dawn raid• They also recovered some stolen ammunition during a dawn raid on this flat in Notting Hill.• Seven pistols were discovered under a bed in a dawn raid on a flat.• A dawn raid by about 200 heavily armed law officers bagged more than 30 members and associates of the white-supremacist prison gang.• Almost his first action was a post-election dawn raid in July 1983 on departmental budgets.From Longman Business Dictionarydawn raidˌdawn ˈraid noun [countable] FINANCE when a company suddenly buys a large number of shares in another company at the start of trading on a stock exchange, in an attempt to get control of itA dawn raid gives the board of the target company little time to react or advise its shareholders.dawn raidˌdawn ˈraidFINANCE an occasion when someone buys a lot of shares in a company in the first few minutes of the day’s trading, in an attempt to get control of itA dawn raid allows the build-up of a significant stake in a target company within a matter of hours, giving the board of the target company little time to react or advise its shareholders. → raid 