"Assassinated by gunshot"

[MikeN1]

Assassinated by knife /knife wound
Assassinated by poison/poisoning
Assassinated by bomb/bomb explosion

[hannes]

Let’s replace “Assassinated” with similar words

He was attacked by knife wound.
He was killed by poisoning.
He was murdered by bomb explosion.

[urodacus]

English is a funny old language, innit?

[Charlie_Jack]

The phrase seems to have somewhat of a presence in Google Books:

"assassinated by gunshot" - Google 搜尋

A little comparison:

[hannes]

Assassinated by a wound just sounds not right. But hey it’s a funny language.

[Dr_Milker]

@hannes

Assassinated by a wound just sounds not right.

The wound would be a “gunshot wound.” A wound caused by a gunshot.

[hannes]

Whatever wound it was, it did the assassination. Bad wound.

[Andrew]

@jinyu

I don’t see why the use of “gunshot” is a problem here either. The OED, for instance, defines “gunshot” as “a shot from a gun.” Abe assassinated by (means of) gunshot (a shot from a gun). There’s nothing archaic about using gunshot to refer to the fact of bullets striking something/ someone rather than the sound. OED, for instance, defines “gunshot wound” as “a wound made by a bullet from a gun.” Abe died of gunshot wounds.

Okay, then we disagree.

I’d definitely change it if it was in something I was editing, including in a headline. I’m not 100% sure it’s wrong, but I find it awkward at best, and it seems some others do too.

[Dr_Milker]

@hannes

Whatever wound it was, it did the assassination. Bad wound.

No, it was the cause of death.

[Andrew]

@Charlie_Jack

The phrase seems to have somewhat of a presence in Google Books:

Those numbers on the y axis seem pretty low though - it appears to have been used something like 22 times over a century. That’s uncommon enough for it to be suspicious.

[hannes]

My only problem with this is that “assassinate by” to me sounds like it points at the culprit who carried out the assassination not the methods and certainly not the cause of death. I know English is quite flexible at times, and that’s why I started this thread. Just wanted to hear what native speakers had to say about it.

I, ignorant as I am, probably would have used “with”. “He was assassinated with a gun.” “He was killed by a gun/gunshot” sounds OK to me too, cause it points more to the cause of death. “Assassinate”, however, to me seems to be pointing more to the motivation part of the action not the dying part.

This is a big nothing-burger, I know.

[Andrew]

@hannes

My only problem with this is that “assassinate by” to me sounds like it points at the culprit who carried out the assassination not the methods and certainly not the cause of death. I know English is quite flexible at times, and that’s why I started this thread. Just wanted to hear what native speakers had to say about it.

You’re not wrong. That’s what I would expect to see after “by” here as well.

[Dr_Milker]

@hannes

He was assassinated with a gun.

= He was assassinated by means of a gun. = He was assassinated by (a) gun/gunshot.

It sounds very unnatural to my ears, but not grammatically incorrect I think.

[hannes]

@Dr_Milker

unnatural to my ears

That’s it.

[Dr_Milker]

@hannes

That’s it.

English is basically held together with duct tape and ABC gum…

[urodacus]

And the blood, snot and sweat of a dozen linguistic ingressions and outright overwhelmings.

[slawa]

Assassinated by bleeding out.

[Dr_Milker]

@slawa

by bleeding out

Caused by gunshot…