ASSASSINATION

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does assassination mean? 

• ASSASSINATION (noun)
  The noun ASSASSINATION has 2 senses:

1. an attack intended to ruin someone's reputation

2. murder of a public figure by surprise attack

  Familiarity information: ASSASSINATION used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ASSASSINATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An attack intended to ruin someone's reputation

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

assassination; blackwash; character assassination

Hypernyms ("assassination" is a kind of...):

calumniation; calumny; defamation; hatchet job; obloquy; traducement (a false accusation of an offense or a malicious misrepresentation of someone's words or actions)

Derivation:

assassinate (destroy or damage seriously, as of someone's reputation)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Murder of a public figure by surprise attack

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("assassination" is a kind of...):

execution; murder; slaying (unlawful premeditated killing of a human being by a human being)

Derivation:

assassinate (murder; especially of socially prominent persons)

 Context examples 

It is well they don’t have days of fog in the Latin countries—the countries of assassination.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge: but to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)