page_title: Assassination
section_title: Etymology
hierarchical_section_title: Assassination / Etymology
caption_attribution_description: English: Arrest card of Lee Harvey Oswald on November 23, 1963, the day after he assassinated United States President John F. Kennedy
context_page_description: Assassination is the act of deliberately killing a prominent person, such as a head of state or head of government. An assassination may be prompted by political and military motives. It is an act that may be done for financial gain, to avenge a grievance, from a desire to acquire fame or notoriety, or because of a military, security, insurgent or secret police group's command to carry out the assassination. Acts of assassination have been performed since ancient times.
context_section_description: The word assassin is often believed to derive from the word hashshashin (Arabic: حشّاشين, ħashshāshīyīn, also hashishin, hashashiyyin, or assassins),  and shares its etymological roots with hashish (/hæˈʃiːʃ/ or /ˈhæʃiːʃ/; from Arabic: حشيش ḥashīsh). It referred to a group of Nizari Ismailis known as the Assassins who worked against various political targets.
  Founded by Hassan-i Sabbah, the Assassins were active in the fortress of Alamut in Persia from the 8th to the 14th centuries, and later expanded by capturing forts in Syria. The group killed members of the Abbasid, Seljuk, Fatimid, and Christian Crusader elite for political and religious reasons.
  Although it is commonly believed that Assassins were under the influence of hashish during their killings or during their indoctrination, there is debate as to whether these claims have merit, with many Eastern writers and an increasing number of Western academics coming to believe that drug-taking was not the key feature behind the name.
  The earliest known use of the verb "to assassinate" in printed English was by Matthew Sutcliffe in A Briefe Replie to a Certaine Odious and Slanderous Libel, Lately Published by a Seditious Jesuite, a pamphlet printed in 1600, five years before it was used in Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1605).
caption: Mugshot of Lee Harvey Oswald, the individual responsible for the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Oswald himself was murdered two days later by Jack Ruby, the first such event to receive wide television coverage.
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