assassination

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:22 AM -0400 3/23/11, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Many years ago I read or heard that "assassination" was a prejudicial,
>elitist ideological term because it implied that prominent people deserve a
>special word when they're murdered.
>
>Every time you use it you're promoting hierarchy and oppression.

Plus its use oppresses all peaceful hashish users everywhere.

LH

P.S.  Jim McCawley once argued that "assassinate/ation" can't really
be defined in terms of the prominence of the victim.  Intention must
be taken into account.  If X is aiming at her unfaithful husband, or
if Y is trying to take down his overbearing mother-in-law, and either
of them happens to hit the mayor who was just passing by, this
doesn't count as assassination.

Intuitions may differ, though--if Oswald had been trying to
assassinate John Connolly in that car passing through Dealey Plaza,
wouldn't we still say he assassinated JFK?  Could we say he
accidentally assassinated Kennedy?

Then, speaking of mayors, there's the Mayor Anton Cermak
"assassination".  From the wiki-entry,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Cermak:

========
While shaking hands with President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt at
Bayfront Park in Miami, Florida, on February 15, 1933, Cermak [the
mayor of Chicago--LH] was shot in the lung and seriously wounded when
Giuseppe Zangara, who at the time was believed to have been engaged
in an attempt to assassinate Roosevelt, hit Cermak instead.
========

Cermak died a couple of weeks later, but had he been assassinated?
Apparently, Zangara's intentions are still under debate, but most
descriptions count this as an assassination.



>
>
>On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:13 AM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
>>  Subject:      assassination
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  Yesterday an escaping carjacker shot and killed an Athens GA policeman.
>>   Both the police chief and several TV commentators has been referring to the
>>  murder as an "assassination."
>>
>>  That use of the term sounds odd to me.  Some dictionaries, in entries for
>>  the noun and its corresponding verb, specify the killing of a "prominent
>>  person" or "public figure"; others say "especially" for that limitation.
>>
>>  The OED does not (nor does it give any examples of the noun or verb from
>>  later than the mid-19th century, except in figurative senses, as in
>>  "character assassination").  Should it?  I assume the specialization of the
>>  terms (if such exists) is a somewhat receent development (19th or 20th
>>  century).
>>
>>  --Charlie
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
>--
>"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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