Word.ws English Dictionary

character-assassinate

character-assassinate verb: to damage the reputation of (someone) by malicious discourse.

Verb

character-assassinate (third-person singular simple present character-assassinates, present participle character-assassinating, simple past and past participle character-assassinated)

  1. (transitive) To damage the reputation of (someone) by malicious discourse.
    • Michelle Phillips is a writer who character-assassinates herself—and occasionally others—in passing. Reading her view of herself in the rear-view mirror is like witnessing that most casual of car accidents, so common on the California freeways, the side swipe.1986 September 21, Julia Cameron, “Papa John by John Phillips with Jim Jerome […]; California Dreamin’ by Michelle Phillips […]”, in Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, Calif.: Los Angeles Times...
    • “He was murdered twice.” First he was targeted (while en route to testify to a grand jury) by mob hit men and shot in that stairwell. Then he was character-assassinated as the Arizona real estate crime wave drew intense scrutiny.2009 November 16, Janet Maslin, “Desperately Seeking Dad: A Murder Mystery”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 22 Apr 2014

Forms of character-assassinate

third-person singular presentcharacter-assassinates
present participlecharacter-assassinating
past participlecharacter-assassinated
pastcharacter-assassinated
alternative formcharacter assassinate

Origin of character-assassinate

Back-formation from character assassination.

Questions about character-assassinate

What does character-assassinate mean?
Character-assassinate means to damage the reputation of (someone) by malicious discourse.
What part of speech is character-assassinate?
Character-assassinate is a verb.
What is the past tense of character-assassinate?
The past tense of character-assassinate is character-assassinated.

Words near character-assassinate in the dictionary

  1. character traits
  2. character user interface
  3. character user interfaces
  4. character witness
  5. character witnesses
  6. character-assassinate
  7. character-assassinated
  8. character-assassinates
  9. character-assassinating
  10. character-assassination
  11. character-assassinations

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: character-assassinate (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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