for: works titled "Assassination"

Assassination is the targeted killing of a public figure. Assassinations may be prompted by ideological, political, or military reasons. Additionally, assassins may be motivated by financial gain, revenge, personal public recognition, or mental illness.

The euphemism targeted killing (or extrajudicial punishment/execution) is also used for the government-sanctioned killing of opponents.Commentary: Targeted killing... - Cohen, Ariel, Washington Post, Thursday 25 March 2004

In figurative language usage, the word "assassination" may also be used in colloquial speech as a hyperbole, as in the phrase character assassination, meaning an attempt to impugn another's character, and thus kill, or "assassinate" his reputation and credibility.

Etymology

Main: Hashshashin The term 'Assassin' derives from the Persian word Hashshashin (Ar: حشاشون \ جماعة الحشاشين), a militant Ismailite Persian sect, active in the Northern parts of Iran (Alamut) from the eighth to the fourteenth centuries. This mystic secret society killed members of the Abbasid and Seljuq élite for political and religious reasons.

It is believed that the assassins were under the influence of hashish and opium during their killings or during their indoctrination, and that assassin derives from hasishin, the influence of the drugs. However, this is only partly true. At the time of their existence "Hashashins" were people who sold medicine. The region of Alamut was filled with plants rich with natural medicine and many of the residents of that region made a living by selling those plants at Bazaars (Marketplaces) that were called Bazare Hashashin (The medicine market). Due to their advanced medicine during that period, they were able to offer free health care to their citizens. Also many people in Iran would travel to the region of Alamut to get cured for unknown illnesses.

The earliest known literary use of the term "assassination" is in The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1605).

Definition problem

The definition of "assassination" varies among sources. The American Heritage Dictionary defines "to assassinate" thus:

... to murder prominent person by surprise attack, as for political reasons;

however, the Oxford English Dictionary's definition is:

The action of assassinating; the taking the life of any one by treacherous violence, esp. by a hired emissary, or one who has taken upon him to execute the deed.

There is disputeFact: date=November 2008 whether the term assassination should include killings wherein the primary motivation is attracting attention to a political cause, and wherein the victim is of secondary importance (and might be famous, but unrelated to the dispute, or even an unknown). This leads to a number of possible definitions - which may however not all apply in any specific case: