Obs. Also 7 assassinat, -asinate, -acinate. [In sense 1, app. a. F. assassinat (16th c.), ad. med.L. assassīnātus (13th c. in Du Cange), f. med.L. (and It.) assassīnāre to assassinate. Of its use in sense 2, = ASSASSIN, no explanation appears; we may suspect some original misapprehension of the word, or perh. application of the analogy of homicide, parricide, etc.]
1. Murder, or an assault with intent to murder, by treacherous violence; assassination.
1602. S. Patericke, trans. Gentillet’s Agst. Machiavell, 228. All murders, massacres, and assassinates, are alwaies found done to a good end.
1636. Featly, Clavis Myst., v. 54. The bloudy assacinate of the Earl of Gowrie.
1671. True Non-Conf., 406. There can be no proper assassinat, without an intervening price.
1755. Carte, Hist. Eng., IV. 195. Following him to Portsmouth … he committed the assassinate on his person.
b. fig.
1672. Marvell, Reh. Transp., I. 187. Who commit these Assassinats upon the reputation of deserving persons.
2. = ASSASSIN 2.
1600. Holland, Livy, II. xiii. 40. Nothing had saved him but the mistake of the Assassinate.
1621. Burton, Anat. Mel., I. ii. IV. vi. 159. Poverty alone makes men theeves, rebels, murderers, traitors, assacinates.
1676. W. Row, Suppl. Blair’s Autobiog., xii. (1848), 519. Search out the villain, the assassinate.
1737. G. Smith, Cur. Relat., I. iii. 483. To raise the Number of Assassinates to three Hundred; then to fall upon the Magistrates.
b. fig. = ASSASSIN 3.
a. 1659. Cleveland, Gen. Poems (1677), 60. Scribling Assassinate!… Cub of the Blatant Beast.
1695. Whether Parl. dissolved by Death Pr. Orange, 6. Those Miscreants, and Assassinates of their Country.
