assassination
Americannoun
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the premeditated act of killing someone suddenly or secretively, especially a prominent person.
The meticulous way in which the journalist's assassination was carried out has led to suspicions that his killers were professionals working for state security.
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the act of destroying or harming treacherously and viciously.
They went after me with everything they had, engaging in character assassination and in destroying my reputation—a complete fabrication and frame-up.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of assassination
Explanation
An assassination is the murder of a public figure. Assassinations are usually politically motivated. If someone kills your dog, that’s not an assassination, that’s just murder (unless your dog was running for mayor). A murder is the unjust, illegal killing of someone. An assassination is a type of murder in which the victim is someone well known, usually in the world of politics. The killings of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinations: their purpose was to destabilize the government and hurt the civil rights movement, respectively. As assassination is murder plus politics.
Vocabulary lists containing assassination
American History I
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March Vocabulary Words
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World War I
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Wood's adaptation of The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher has just opened at the Liverpool Everyman theatre.
From BBC • May 8, 2026
Assassination attempts can also soften the tenor of how the media covers presidents.
From Slate • Apr. 26, 2026
Maybe he was waiting for the right story to tell after his Emmy-nominated turn as Versace’s partner, Antonio D’Amico, in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” in 2018.
From Los Angeles Times • May 27, 2024
The documents made public on Thursday included many that have been previously released with redactions, said Gerald Posner, an investigative journalist and author of “Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.”
From New York Times • Dec. 15, 2022
The Assassination of Garfield Predicted.—The assassination of Garfield was foretold by many sensitives, for that great event seemed to cast a strong shadow before it.
From Studies in the Out-Lying Fields of Psychic Science by Tuttle, Hudson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
