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Glite Dictionary
🔫 To murder a leader 🗣️ To ruin reputation
to assassinate

to assassinate

16 7.4
To damage someone's good name by telling lies about them
  • verb
  • /əˈsæsɪˌneɪt/
translation icon : difamar
  • During the debate, he tried to assassinate his opponent's character with misleading accusations.

They did everything they could to character assassinate me, saying I'm a liar, I'm a CIA spy, I get paid.

Examples

  • They attempted to assassinate her reputation by spreading false rumors.

  • You have to assassinate their character first.

    Scream VI (2023)

  • "And the way it keeps going, it is almost as if the intent is to assassinate her character."

    Blog text (1)

  • I try to protect players from being character assassinated as to who they are.

  • You may not like her decisions, but that doesn't give you the right to assassinate her character.

    Blog text (26)

  • Romney's character was assassinated by a press complicit with the Obama campaign.

    Blog text (19)

  • They did everything they could to character assassinate me, saying I'm a liar, I'm a CIA spy, I get paid.

    Lex Fridman

  • Apparently, through pure jealousy, Griswold set about assassinating Poe's character, claiming he was a depraved alcoholic and drug addict.

    Blog text (1)

  • The article's aim was to assassinate her character, portraying her as untrustworthy and dishonest.

Antonyms

to defend
∞ 1.3

To protect people and things from attack or harm

Phrasal Verbs

to conspire to assassinate
  • Offensive
1 9.9

To secretly plan with others to kill an important person

How Damaging

to ruin
∞ 2.0
to assassinate
16 7.4
to smear
55 6.1
to attack
597 3.4
to criticize
701 3.3

Surface Forms

assassinate infinitive
assassinated past
assassinated past participle
assassinating present participle
assassinates third person singular

Morphology

assassinate = assassin (semi-transparent) = assassin + ate

The morphological formation is clear (assassin + -ate), but the sense is a metaphorical extension ('to destroy someone's reputation'), which is not directly derivable as literal murder.

Etymology

Assassinate can also mean to damage someone's good name; because it first meant to kill an important person, people use it in a figurative way to 'kill' a person's reputation, as in the phrase character assassination.