Meaning & use
character assassination
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Meaning
noununcountabledisapproving
A deliberate effort to ruin someone's good name by spreading lies or unfair criticism about their personality or past.
Grammar: Mostly uncountable: the report was character assassination; sometimes with a: a character assassination.
Patterns
- a campaign of character assassination
- engage in character assassination
The leaked emails were pure character assassination, aimed at ending her career.
He accused the newspaper of character assassination after the story appeared.
Instead of debating policy, the candidate resorted to character assassination.
Common combinations
- engage in character assassination
- The committee refused to engage in character assassination.
- victim of character assassination
- She became the victim of a vicious character assassination.
- vicious character assassination
- The film was accused of vicious character assassination.
- resort to character assassination
- Critics said the party had resorted to character assassination.
- campaign of character assassination
- A campaign of character assassination ruined his reputation.
Synonyms and how they differ
- smear campaign
- Smear campaign is the more common everyday phrase and stresses an organized effort, whereas character assassination stresses the attack on someone's character.
- slander
- Slander means false spoken statements and is a legal term, while character assassination describes a broader attack that may use many methods.
- defamation
- Defamation is formal and legal, and it does not require the intention to destroy someone completely as character assassination suggests.
- mudslinging
- Mudslinging is informal and usually refers to political insults, which are often less thorough than a full character assassination.
Opposites
Word family
- assassinate verb
- to kill an important person for political reasons
- assassination noun
- the killing of a prominent person
- assassin noun
- a person who carries out such a killing
- character noun
- a person's qualities and moral nature
Commonly confused: character assassination or constructive criticism?
character assassination vs constructive criticism
Constructive criticism is honest feedback meant to help. Character assassination uses falsehoods and personal attacks to harm.
Practice
The article was called character assassination because it ____.
Choose one answer.
Character assassination is an attempt to destroy a reputation, usually with false claims. Honest feedback, praise and plain reporting do not do that.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “character assassination”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.