ASSASSIN

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does assassin mean? 

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

1. a murderer (especially one who kills a prominent political figure) who kills by a surprise attack and often is hired to do the deed

2. a member of a secret order of Muslims (founded in the 12th century) who terrorized and killed Christian Crusaders

  Familiarity information: ASSASSIN used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ASSASSIN (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A murderer (especially one who kills a prominent political figure) who kills by a surprise attack and often is hired to do the deed

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

assassin; assassinator; bravo

Context example:

assassinators of kings and emperors

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

liquidator; manslayer; murderer (a criminal who commits homicide (who performs the unlawful premeditated killing of another human being))

Domain category:

government; political science; politics (the study of government of states and other political units)

Instance hyponyms:

Booth; John Wilkes Booth (United States actor and assassin of President Lincoln (1838-1865))

Lee Harvey Oswald; Oswald (United States assassin of President John F. Kennedy (1939-1963))

Derivation:

assassinate (murder; especially of socially prominent persons)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A member of a secret order of Muslims (founded in the 12th century) who terrorized and killed Christian Crusaders

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

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

Moslem; Muslim (a believer in or follower of Islam)

 Context examples 

An assassin does not come unarmed.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Come, Victor; not brooding thoughts of vengeance against the assassin, but with feelings of peace and gentleness, that will heal, instead of festering, the wounds of our minds.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

She had nothing to dread from midnight assassins or drunken gallants.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

I had the conscience of an assassin, and was haunted by a vague sense of enormous wickedness.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I am the assassin of those most innocent victims; they died by my machinations.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

“There can be no question that this was snatched from the face or the person of the assassin.”

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Now, first of all, presuming that the assassin entered the house, how did he or she come in?

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The famous Smith-Mortimer succession case comes also within this period, and so does the tracking and arrest of Huret, the Boulevard assassin—an exploit which won for Holmes an autograph letter of thanks from the French President and the Order of the Legion of Honour.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)