assassin

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“
Why Gaskins should have identified him as the assassin was a mystery--probably it was merely the delirium of a sorely wounded man, although the fellow may have disliked him sufficiently for that kind of revenge, or have mistaken him for another in the poor light.

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Definitions (11)

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  1. noun One who murders by surprise attack, especially one who carries out a plot to kill a prominent person.
  2. noun A member of a secret order of Muslims who terrorized and killed Christian Crusaders and others.
  3. Word History
    Active in Persia and Syria from the 8th to 14th centuries, the original Assassins were members of the Nizaris, a Muslim group who opposed the Abbasid caliphate with threats of sudden assassination by their secret agents. Other populations of the area regarded the Nizaris as unorthodox outcasts, and from this attitude came one of the names for the group, ḥaššāšīn, a word originally meaning "hashish users,” which had become a general term of abuse. Reliable sources offer no evidence of hashish use by Nizari agents, but sensationalistic stories of murderous, drug-crazed ḥaššāšīn or Assassins were widely repeated in Europe. Marco Polo tells a tale of how young Assassins were given a potion and made to yearn for paradise—their reward for dying in action—by being given a life of pleasure. As the legends spread, the word ḥaššāšīn passed through French or Italian and appeared in English as assassin in the 16th century, already with meanings like "treacherous killer.”

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Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. French, from Medieval Latin assassīnus, from Arabic ḥaššāšīn, pl. of ḥaššāš, hashish user, from ḥašīš, hashish; see hashish.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. from French assassin = Provencal assassin = Spanish asesino = Portuguese Italian assassino, from Middle Latin assassinus, properly one of the Assassini, Assasini, Assessini, Ascisini (also Asasi, Haussasi; cf. Old French Assacis, Hassasis, Middle Greek χασίσ, σ1ιοι, plural, from the Arabic singular), from Arabic Hashshāshn and Hashīshiyyīn, the order or sect of the Assassins, literally hashisheaters (so called because the agents selected to do murder were first intoxicated with hashish), plural of hashshāsh and hashīshiyy, hashisheater, from hashīsh, hashish: see hashish.
  2. from French assassiner, assassinate, worry, vex, = Italian assassinare, assassinate, from Middle Latin assassinare; from the noun.
 

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/əˈsæsɪn/
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