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assassin

noun
/əˈsæsɪn/UK

Etymology

From either French assassin or Italian assassino, from Arabic أَسَاسِيِّين (ʔasāsiyyīn, “people who are faithful to the foundation [of the faith]”) and the folkloric etymology Arabic حَشَّاشِين (ḥaššāšīn, “hashish users; low-lives”). The mathematical sense was introduced by Bourbaki, playing on the notation operatorname Ass(M) and the fact that an associated prime is the annihilator of an element, and so is said to kill that element.

  1. derived from أَسَاسِيّ
  2. borrowed from assassino
  3. borrowed from assassin

Definitions

  1. Someone who intentionally kills a person, especially a professional who kills a public or…

    Someone who intentionally kills a person, especially a professional who kills a public or political figure.

    • The hand that held the bond of so many jarring interests lay powerless beneath the pall. The perils of war had been about him, and the midnight assassin had watched his path; yet he died quietly in his bed.
    • What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause can ever be stilled by an assassin’s bullet.

  2. Any ruthless killer.

  3. A member of the Nizari Ismaili Muslim community of the Alamut Period.

  4. ›+ 2 more definitions

    1. An associated prime of a module.

    2. To assassinate.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for assassin. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA