assassinare

Forms

assassinare (first-person singular present assassìno, first-person singular past historic assassinài, past participle assassinàto, auxiliary avére)^[1]

Etymology

It is formed from Italian assassino (“assassin, murderer”) + -are.^[2][1][3][4]

Assassino first named the members of a Muslim sect of Persia and Syria, obedient to the “Old Man of the Mountain”, who became famous for their political murders at the time of the Crusades.^[4][5] DELI traces the name to the Arabic for “hashish smokers”, and Nocentini to colloquial Arabic plural forms of a derivative of Arabic حَشِيش (ḥašīš, “hashish”), which came into Italian through hassissin and perhaps through Occitan;^[4][5][1] Wiktionary gives حَشَّاشِين (ḥaššāšīn, “hashish users”) or, as an alternative, أَسَاسِيُّون (ʔasāsiyyūn, “fundamentalists”).^[4][5][1] Nocentini rejects the story that the killers drugged themselves before their deeds and suggests the Arabic name meant “rabble”; the sense “murderer” arose in Italian and spread from there to the other Romance languages.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Dino Compagni's Cronica (1310–1312), with the sense “to kill out of hatred, revenge or for robbery”: Un giorno ordinorono di farlo assassinare; poi se ne ritrassono per tema del popolo (“one day they ordered him murdered, then drew back for fear of the people”).^[4][3][6]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian used it for killing someone, mostly with treachery or cruelty, and figuratively.^[3] In Machiavelli (1513–1521) it means “to damage gravely” and also “to oppress, maltreat”: Pope Julius had the people of a city maltreated by his governor.^[4][7][8] Tommaseo records it for attacking or beating someone without killing, assassinare di busse, and Davanzati for robbing country people.^[9] Today it is also used for ruining a reputation, and for performing a poem or a piece of music very badly.^[2][10][11]

French took the verb from Italian: assassiner “to destroy, sack (a town)” in 1556, “to slander” from 1560, and “to kill” in 1578.^[12] The English word assassinate, from the 1610s, comes from the past participle of Medieval Latin assassināre.^[13]

Timeline

• Before 1290 – The noun appears as assessino in Guido delle Colonne.^[4]
• 1310–1312 – Dino Compagni uses the verb in his Cronica.^[4][3]
• 1513–1521 – Machiavelli uses it for “to damage gravely”.^[4]
• 1556 – French assassiner is first recorded.^[12]
• 1578 – French assassiner is used for “to kill”.^[12]
• Before 1600 – Assassinio “murder” appears in Davanzati.^[4]
• 1610s – The English verb assassinate is recorded.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. To murder, assassinate: to kill someone violently or treacherously, for criminal ends.^[2][10][11]
2. (figurative) To ruin, damage gravely: a reputation, a city square, trade.^[2][10][14]
3. (figurative) To murder a piece of music, a poem or a play: to perform it very badly.^[2][10][11]
4. (literary) To maltreat, oppress.^[7][8]

Word family

• assassinio
• assassinamento
• assassinatore

Related words

• assassino
• hascisc

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
3. ^ a b c d Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 1, 749
7. ^ a b Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
8. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
9. ^ Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
10. ^ a b c d Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
11. ^ a b c Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
12. ^ a b c Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
13. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
14. ^ Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse