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Originally Posted by centaur532
I think character assassination is the dumbest phrase I've ever heard. Assassination is the murder of an important person, a figurehead, a national or international leader.
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Well, actually if you check out the dictionary ("assasinate"), you'll find:
1. to kill suddenly or secretively, esp. a politically prominent person; murder premeditatedly and treacherously.
2. to destroy or harm treacherously and viciously: to assassinate a person's character.
(Emphasis original to dictionary.com. My 1966 Random House unabridged has the same definitions.)
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Why can't people just say defamation of character?
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Because they're not necessarily the same thing. Character assassination is form of defamation with the particular purpose of ending someone's political or business career or a similar effect. As the Wiki article that Drolefille linked says:
Such acts are typically very difficult to reverse or rectify, therefore the process is correctly likened to a literal assassination of a human life. The damage sustained can be life-long and more, or for historical personages, last for many centuries after their death.