assassinatrix

English

WOTD – 13 July 2017

L’Assassinat de Marat (The Assassination of Marat, 1860) by Paul-Jacques-Aimé Baudry, collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, Nantes, France. It depicts the assassinatrix Charlotte Corday after she stabbed Jean-Paul Marat to death in his bath on 13 July 1793. Marat was a leader of the radical Jacobin Club which had played a key role in the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.

Etymology

Latin assassinatrix, equivalent to assassinate +‎ -trix.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: əsăʹsĭnā'trĭks, IPA^(key): /əˈsæsɪˌneɪtɹɪks/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: as‧sas‧sin‧a‧trix

Noun

assassinatrix (plural assassinatrices)

1. (rare) A female assassin.
   • 1881, Leonard A. Montefiore, Essays and Letters Contributed to Various Periodicals between September 1877 and August 1879, together with Some Unpublished Fragments, London: [s.n.], →OCLC, page xlvi:

     The young Socialists had glorified Vera Sassoulitsch, the Russian would-be assassinatrix.

   • 2004 April 14, Richard von Busack, “‘Bill’ Paying: When Everything is Cool, Nothing is Hip—Quentin Tarantino Kills Again [review of Kill Bill: Volume 2]”, in Metroactive, Metro Silicon Valley‎^[1], archived from the original on 21 September 2015:

     [T]he Bride tracks down [David] Carradine's Bill—leader, mentor and more to this unstoppable assassinatrix.

   • 2011, Len Brown, Jason Statham: Taking Stock, London: Orion Publishing, →OCLC:

     Having appeared with Jason [Statham] in Lock, Stock [and Two Smoking Barrels], Snatch and Mean Machine didn't necessarily qualify Jason Flemyng to play the hapless Russian villain Dimitri, while Kate Nauta's role as an evil assassinatrix dressed only in bra, pants, suspenders and high heels teetered from the initially sexy to the rudely ridiculous.

Synonyms

• assassinatress

Related terms

• assassin
• assassinate
• assassination
• assassinator

Translations

female assassin

• Arabic: خَشَّاشَة f (ḵaššāša), سَفَّاكَة f (saffāka), سَفَّاحَة f (saffāḥa)
• Italian: assassinatrice