assassination
Americannoun
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assassinations
plural
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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
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
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.
See Examples For:
"It was a galvanising moment for him," Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for the New York Times, said in a recent interview, external when discussing both the Iranian plots and assassination attempts of 2024.
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2026
The dark comedy follows a miserable Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading to the assassination of her husband, who will be played by the Tony Award-winning actor J. Harrison Ghee.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2026
The Secret Service has said it is dealing with an unprecedented number of threats against the people it protects, including President Donald Trump, who has escaped several assassination attempts.
From Barron's ● Jul. 23, 2026
Political upheaval gave way to gang violence following the 2021 assassination of Haiti’s president, resulting in more Haitians seeking the status in the early 2020s.
From Salon ● Jul. 13, 2026
Three of the doctors were also connected to President Lincoln's assassination.
From "Ambushed!" by Gail Jarrow
Vietnam, inner-city riots, and the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. had cast a pall over the Day-Glo optimism of the Love Generation.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 10, 2026
Unlike so many retellings of famous assassinations, attempted or otherwise, Harron’s movie gets to the heart of its subject’s discontent without dwelling on dramatizations of Solanas’ fragile psyche.
From Salon ● Apr. 29, 2026
Presidential assassinations have been spawning conspiracy theories since Lincoln.
From Slate ● Apr. 28, 2026
"Well, you know, I've studied assassinations," Trump said.
From Barron's ● Apr. 26, 2026
The executive branch of the government—Vice President Johnson and the cabinet—had survived the night; no other assassinations had occurred.
From "Chasing Lincoln's Killer" by James L. Swanson
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.
