Assassination is the deliberate killing of an important person, usually a political figure or other strategically important individual. An assassin (one who carries out an assassination), or the assassin's employer, usually has an ideological or political agenda, and regards the target as a serious obstacle to furthering their agenda. Other motivations may be money (in the case of a contract killing), revenge, or acts of espionage at the request of a government. Assassination, like companion terms such as terrorism and freedom fighter, is often considered to be a loaded term.

Some governments use the euphemism targeted killing as the name for the controversial strategy to save their citizens' lives whereby anticipated acts of terrorism are prevented by assassinating a person deemed to be related to those acts.

Etymology