Assassin

Looking into the etymology of this word, we find that an assassin is not just a murderer, but a stoned murderer. Glad we got the facts right, eh?

The story is set in the lands of Arabia sometime in the 11th century. A muslim sect was ruled by one Hassan-Al-Sabah, a man who practiced the Ismaili faith. As usual, there were 'disagreements' between the factions existing at the time and Hassan-Al-Sabah, who didn't have enough material power, devised the best form of attack- assassination. This guy took out a lot of his Sunni enemies using Hashisheen- men who doped themselves on hashish before carrying out their gruesome tasks. From 'hashisheen' to 'assassin', the white man's tongue twisting sealed the deal. As wikipedia chillingly puts it-



Knives and daggers were used to kill, and sometimes as a warning, a knife would be placed onto the pillow of a Sunni, who understood the message that he was marked for death.When an assassination was actually carried out, the Hashisheen would not be allowed to run away; instead, to strike further fear into the enemy, they would stand near the victim without showing any emotion and departed only when the body was discovered. This further increased the ruthless reputation of the Hashisheen throughout Sunni-controlled lands.

There is an alternate etymology for the word which isn't quite half as interesting, so I'm going with this one- I think it's the ruthless romantic in me ;)