What's the difference between assassinate and slay?

Assassinate


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To kill by surprise or secret assault; to murder by treacherous violence.
  • (v. t.) To assail with murderous intent; hence, by extended meaning, to maltreat exceedingly.
  • (n.) An assassination, murder, or murderous assault.
  • (n.) An assassin.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) She was not aware that it was an assassination attempt by alleged foreign agents.” If at least one of the women thought the killing was part of an elaborate prank, it might explain the “LOL” message emblazoned in large letters one of the killers t-shirts.
  • (2) She read geography at Oxford, where Benazir Bhutto (a future prime minister of Pakistan, assassinated in 2007) introduced May to her future husband, Philip May: "I hate to say this, but it was at an Oxford University Conservative Association disco… this is wild stuff.
  • (3) When Martin Luther King was assassinated, they sent state troopers to my high school in east St Louis.
  • (4) Contrary to the claims of some commentators, such as Steve Vladeck , it is impossible to argue reasonably that the memo imposed a requirement of "infeasibility of capture" on Obama's assassination power.
  • (5) He was indicted on weapons charges and accused of plotting robberies and the assassination of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s founder.
  • (6) Sadly, the Jewish fanatic who assassinated Rabin in 1995 achieved his broader aim of derailing the peace train.
  • (7) The 25-year-old student is adamant that her mother, Berta Cáceres Flores, will not become just one more Honduran environmental activist whose work was cut short by their assassination.
  • (8) As well as George Dyer, there was the murderer Perry Smith in the Truman Capote story Infamous, the hot-headed mobster child-killer in Road To Perdition, the brooding Ted Hughes in Gwyneth Paltrow’s Sylvia biopic and a belligerent Mossad assassin in Steven Spielberg’s Munich.
  • (9) Compaoré was 36 when he seized power in a coup in which Thomas Sankara, his former friend and one of Africa’s most revered leaders, was ousted and assassinated.
  • (10) The surprise return of Saleh last month, after recovering in Saudi Arabia from an assassination attempt, has plunged the country into deeper uncertainty and sharpened the differences between pro- and anti-government camps.
  • (11) The attacks had clear echoes of the unsolved assassination in January this year of one of their colleagues, particle physicist Masoud Alimohammadi.
  • (12) The exposure of unsavoury candidates, allegations of racism and attempts at character assassination of Nigel Farage can be traced to Lynton Crosby , the architect of Conservative strategy who is a veteran of battles with the far-right Pauline Hanson in Australia.
  • (13) Its willingness to ignore diplomatic convention and use its Kuala Lumpur embassy to conduct an extraterritorial assassination will be seen as setting a dire precedent that cannot be allowed to stand.
  • (14) • An assassination attempt against Gennady Kernes, the wealthy mayor of Kharkiv, left him in "extremely serious but stable condition" in the hospital.
  • (15) I was told the Guardian had been too negative about Playboy in the past, and that they were also wary after a recent "trashing in the Sunday Times magazine – where Mr Hefner underwent a complete character assassination".
  • (16) Along with other recent events elsewhere in Guerrero – including the assassination of a party political boss in a well-known restaurant in Acapulco on Sunday and the murder of five people in one of the city’s poor barrios on Monday – the impression is growing that the state, long in a state of conflict, is being pushed over the edge.
  • (17) It explains the failure to unearth evidence of assassination: because state-appointed aviation experts conducted the investigation, their conclusion that it had been an accident proves that the state remains in the hands of the perpetrators (Law and Justice defence minister Antoni Macierewicz described their investigation as the greatest cover-up “in the history of the world”).
  • (18) Two years later Rabin was assassinated by a militant Israeli opponent of the peace process.
  • (19) The future James I resorted to them on several occasions in Scotland: in 1600, for instance, he had two alleged assassins pickled in whisky, vinegar and allspice, put on trial, and then mutilated.
  • (20) But these are only the latest of the clashes and atrocities that have engulfed Libya since Nato's "liberation": including bombings, assassinations, the kidnapping of the prime minister, the seizure of oil terminals by warlords, the explusion of 40,000 mainly black Libyans from their homes, and the killing of 46 protesters on the streets of Tripoli in one incident — ignored by the states that supposedly went to war to protect civilians.

Slay


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To put to death with a weapon, or by violence; hence, to kill; to put an end to; to destroy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) They are small-state Conservatives who believe the commercial world should provide.” Bryant, whose campaign against phone hacking won an award and who has a cartoon of himself as Luke Skywalker slaying the Sith lords Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks on his office wall, said the rumoured return of Brooks to News UK, if it happened, would be a “massive two fingers to the British public”.
  • (2) The film's most chilling image, revealed later on in flashback, is of the tiny Li'l Dice returning to the motel alone and gleefully slaying everyone inside.
  • (3) Perhaps it is the proximity of comedy and aggression (comics like to "slay" or "kill" their audiences, after all) that makes it strangely appropriate to see Sandler showing a more serious and volatile side.
  • (4) vale (@r4ulsonfeels) IM GOING TO SELL MY SOUL TO SATAN FOR GILLIAN AS THE FIRST FEMALE BOND HAPPEN May 21, 2016 charlotte✨ (@bensonscully) @GillianA OK BUT ALSO IDRIS ELBA CAN BE JAMES BOND AND YOU CAN BE JANE BOND AND YOU CAN SLAY EVERYONE May 21, 2016 Kelley Sublett (@Kel_Sub) @felishacarolle And now that someone has put the idea out there...GIVE ME A FEMALE BOND STAT!
  • (5) "Those [from the UK] on the temporary employment register are there for a reason, usually negative," wrote Chris Slay, director of another firm, Skills Provision, in a newsletter to clients .
  • (6) Cain slayed Abel for being more favoured by God than he.
  • (7) This gives the state easy demons to portray and then slay.
  • (8) And now there is a national development plan to slay the three-headed dragon of poverty, unemployment and inequality.
  • (9) The only real difference between Adam and Eve's kids and Marion and Ralph's over-achieving sons is that while the first murderer (Cain) slew Abel because, according to Genesis, the latter was favoured by God, David might have to slay Ed for being favoured by Labour party members.
  • (10) But traders were also cheered that Shinzo Abe promised no let-up in in his drive to stimulate economic growth and slay inflation: In a video message released after his cabiet approved his economic plans, Abe declared: The growth strategy decided today will be the starting point.
  • (11) But the symbolic slaying was a draw, by the hand of tiny New Zealand, of whom nothing was expected.
  • (12) His big-game-slaying holiday was estimated to cost €10,000 (£8,000) a day, with a Syrian businessman close to the Saudi royal family rumoured to be picking up the tab.
  • (13) Rather than explore dungeons slaying and looting, the game put you in charge of the dungeon, digging out new rooms and populating them with monsters and traps.
  • (14) While the passersby and pedestrians you slay out of mission will occasionally drop money, it would be hard to argue that the game rewards you for indiscriminate slaughter.
  • (15) There has been very little research done on family slayings in the RSA.
  • (16) Memorial was forced to close its Grozny office after the 2009 slaying of activist and board member Natalya Estemirova , who was personally investigating “hundreds” of highly sensitive cases of kidnapping and murder.
  • (17) The peculiar thing about the opera is that the back story – war, slayings, the murder of the Irish princess Isolde's betrothed by the Cornish knight Tristan, her determination to kill the latter, her failure to do so, the way she healed Tristan's wounds and kept his identity secret – is more interesting than the story itself, which revolves around the pair not quite being able to make love despite drinking a love potion (substituted by Isolde's lady-in-waiting Brangäne for the poison with which Isolde intended to kill both Tristan and herself as they journeyed to Cornwall, where she was to marry boring old King Marke).
  • (18) The anniversary of the shootings and how it will impact the victims' families has weighed heavily on Gerald Massengill, who led a governor-appointed panel that investigated the slayings.
  • (19) Ebel is also a suspect in the slaying of a Colorado pizza deliveryman who disappeared from work and whose body was found Sunday evening.
  • (20) Beyoncé’s use of “slay” is an additional embrace of the language of the black queer community and, in its repetition, it’s an incantation that can slay haters, slay patriarchy, to slay white supremacy.

Words possibly related to "slay"