assassinate

From assassin +‎ -ate, after Middle French assassiner.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /əˈsasɪneɪt/

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assassinate (third-person singular simple present assassinates, present participle assassinating, simple past and past participle assassinated)

1. To murder someone, especially an important person, by a sudden or obscure attack, especially for ideological or political reasons. [from 17th c.]
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 29, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes, […], book II, printed at London: By Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], OCLC 946730821:

     The Assassines, a nation depending of Phœnicia, are esteemed among the Mahometists […]. And thus was our Earle Raymond of Tripoli murthered or assassinated (this word is borrowed from their name) in the middest of his Citie, during the time of our warres in the holy land […].

2. (figuratively) To harm, ruin, or defame severely or destroy by treachery, slander, libel, or obscure attack.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Dryden

     Your rhymes assassinate our fame.

   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     Such usage as your honourable lords / Afford me, assassinated and betrayed.

• assassin
• assassination
• royal assassin

assassinate (plural assassinates)

1. (obsolete) Assassination, murder.
2. (obsolete) An assassin.
   • 1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC 216894069; The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd corrected and augmented edition, Oxford: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1624, OCLC 54573970:

     , vol.1, III.i.2:

     Yet again, many of them desperate hairbrains, rash, careless, fit to be assassinates, as being void of all fear and sorrow […].

• Wikipedia article on Assassins
• murder
• regicide

assassinate

1. second-person plural present indicative of assassinare
2. second-person plural imperative of assassinare
3. feminine plural of assassinato