tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jun 05 12:55:04 1997

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Re: KLBC: Words for assassin & blade

The word assassin, in English, says nothing about the motive or method of the 
killer, nor does it describe the situation in which the killing occurs, other 
than the fact that an important person was killed. Perhaps a proper 
translation of English assassin would be potlhwI' HoHwI', "killer of someone 
important".

However, the only two canonical Klingon assassinations I am aware of did not 
use the "assassin's knife", and if that is indeed true, that raises another 
question. Just as the English Horn is not English (it comes from cor anglais, 
angled horn), perhaps the "assassin's knife" was originally a knife belonging 
to a warrior named 'aSaSIn or something like it? Entirely speculative, but a 
fair warning to all of us - sometimes the search for meaning leads to a bad 
translation!

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