assassin
/əˈsæsɪn/noun, verb
assassin is spelled A-S-S-A-S-S-I-N. The wrong spelling people search most is assasin: about 450 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 2 in 10 of all searches for the word. Assassin is a noun meaning “Someone who intentionally kills a person, especially a professional who kills a public or political figure”. The plural of assassin is assassins.
How many letters and syllables are in assassin?
| Letters | 8: A-S-S-A-S-S-I-N |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 4.6 times per million words; the 11,870th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, assasin, about 450 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell assassin?
Assassin is spelled A-S-S-A-S-S-I-N. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for assassin in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is assassin?
Assassin appears 4.6 times per million words in written English, the 11,870th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce assassin?
- UK /əˈsæsɪn/
Assassin has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-uk-assassin.oga, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of assassin
- assassins plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- assassining participle, present
- assassined participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does assassin mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Someone who intentionally kills a person, especially a professional who kills a public or political figure.
- 2
Any ruthless killer.
- 3
A member of the Nizari Ismaili Muslim community of the Alamut Period.
- 4
An associated prime of a module.
verb
- 1
nonstandardTo assassinate.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Assassin in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | assassin , assassine |
| German | Assassine , Attentäter, Attentäterin, Mörder, Mörderin , Meuchelmörder |
| Portuguese | assassino , assassina |
| Spanish | asesino, assassin , sicario, magnicida , asesina |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does assassin come from?
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.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).