assassin

1. 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

   “his assassins were hunted down like animals”

   “assassinators of kings and emperors”

   Synonymsassassinatorbravo

   Broadermurderer

   NarrowerBoothOswald

   politics

2. 2.

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

   BroaderMuslim

Other forms of assassin

plural

assassins·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about assassin

What does assassin mean?

assassin means "a murderer (especially one who kills a prominent political figure) who kills by a surprise attack and often is hired to do the deed". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in assassin?

assassin has 3 syllables: as-sas-sin. The stress falls on "sas". In IPA it is /əˈsæsən/.

What is another word for assassin?

Close synonyms include assassinator, bravo. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is assassin a common word?

assassin is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.