assassin

noun

as·​sas·​sin ə-ˈsa-sᵊn 

plural assassins

1

: a person who commits murder

especially : one who murders a politically prominent person either for money or from fanatical adherence to a cause

… the location of the victim's gunshot wounds … might point to a professional assassin.

—Wendy Fry

2

Assassin plural Assassins, history : a person belonging to a Shia Muslim sect during the time of the Crusades whose members were notorious for murdering prominent enemies

For a third of a century, no enemy of the Assassins had ever managed to elude them.

—Amin Maalouf

Synonyms of assassin

• murderer
• killer

Examples of assassin in a Sentence

John Wilkes Booth was the assassin of Abraham Lincoln.

shot down by an unknown assassin

Recent Examples on the Web

When the assassin first meets with Weaver’s character at a restaurant, the circular lighting fixtures, in conjunction with how Hirsch Whitaker frames them, suggests angelic halos floating above the criminals’ heads — fitting (if a bit obvious) in the story of a bad guy trying to do the right thing. —Carlos Aguilar, Variety, 11 Dec. 2025

The situation gets more complex with the addition of a bunch of oddball assassins trying to murder the neighbor, plus other mysterious and shady types like his former associate Laverne (Weaver). —Brian Truitt, USA Today, 11 Dec. 2025

Goldberg also spoke out on the air against Charlie Kirk's assassin in September, after the conservative commentator was killed during a public speaking event on a college campus in Utah earlier this year. —Joey Nolfi, Entertainment Weekly, 9 Dec. 2025

For Foucault, the defining image of pre-modern punishment was the almost unimaginably brutal execution of the would-be royal assassin Robert-François Damiens, in the Paris of Fontenelle and Voltaire. —Adam Gopnik, New Yorker, 8 Dec. 2025

Word History

Etymology

Medieval Latin assassinus, from Arabic ḥashshāshīn, plural of ḥashshāsh worthless person, literally, hashish user, from hashīsh hashish

First Known Use

circa 1520, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Phrases Containing assassin

• assassin bug

Rhymes for assassin

• unfasten
• bason
• casson
• fasten
• cytochalasin
• diapason

Kids Definition

assassin

noun

as·​sas·​sin ə-ˈsas-ən 

: a person who kills another person

especially : one who murders a politically important person either for pay or from loyalty to a cause