Loaded Word

In the enlightening interview “The Shah Always Falls” (February/March 2003), Ralph Peters, when asked about the prohibition of assassination, said it is a loaded word, and also said that we don’t have a better one. However, in my 1935 edition of Webster ’s Twentieth Century Dictionary , I happened upon a word that has fallen out of usage and which could be revived: “tyrannicide, n. (L. tyrannus, tyrant, and caedere, to slay) 1. The act of killing a tyrant. 2. One who kills a tyrant.”