Today we pay tribute to Malcolm X, the American civil rights leader who was assassinated on this date in 1965, with a look at the word assassination. Assassination, the term for "a violent murder of a prominent person," left behind both bodies and drugs on its way into our language.

We'll begin with drugs. Although the Arabic word hashish originally referred to a number of grasslike plants, eventually it came to refer specifically to hemp. A byproduct of the hemp plant, used as an intoxicant, also became known as hashish. That explains the presence of hashish in English . . . but what's the connection to assassin?

During the Crusades, Europeans told stories about a secret Islamic order in Syria, a group whose members were thought to kill under the influence of a drug. We don't know if they truly readied themselves for murder by smoking hashish, but we do know their fellow-Syrians called them hashishin, meaning "hashish-takers."

An Arabic word sounding something like hashishin became the basis for the names of these killers in various Romance languages. In each language, assassin soon lost its association to the East and to religion, and eventually, even to drugs. English speakers are thought to have borrowed the word either from French or Latin during the 14th century, and the modern spelling of assassin became established some time later.

Fassassinating!!!