mob
/mɒb
/noun
1A large crowd of people, especially one that is disorderly and intent on causing trouble or violence: a mob of protesters...
- I feared trouble because the mob was growing restless and violent.
- Authorities clamped down on new curfews and brought in the army to quell the violence, but angry mobs have been turning on those trying to keep the peace.
- Instead, a voice-over quoting from telegraph reports briefly mentions some of the mob's racist violence.
Synonyms
crowd, horde, multitude, rabble, mass, body, throng;
group, host, pack, press, crush, jam, gang, gathering, swarm, assemblage
archaic rout
1.1British informal A group of people in the same place or with something in common: he stood out from the rest of the mob with his silver hair and stacked shoes...
- She may have been the closest we have to an honest politician at the moment but that's by comparison with the rest of the mob and I'm not entirely convinced by her protestations.
- He is a fine batsman but it is his gift for words that distinguishes him from the rest of the mob who play cricket and then write about it.
Synonyms
group, set, crowd, lot, circle, coterie, in-crowd, clan, faction, pack, band, ring, fraternity, brotherhood, society, troop, company, team
informal gang, bunch, lads
British informal shower
1.2Australian An Aboriginal extended family or community: my mob travelled and traded with other people the local mob called this spot Gimba, which means good pastures...
- Birthday parties do appear to be an expression of the organising mob's current standing.
- There's three different mobs left that speak the traditional language.
- Moreover, 'mobs' need to be defined situationally, as they wax and wane in size depending on the occasion.
1.3 (the mob) The ordinary people: the age-old fear that the mob may organize to destroy the last vestiges of civilized life...
- Fear of the mob has always been uppermost in the gentry's minds.
- Unfortunately, the mob was more organized that they expected as freshly reloaded guns began to fire at them.
- They did it because they had a justified fear of the mob.
Synonyms
the common people, the masses, the populace, the public, the multitude, the rank and file, the commonality, the commonalty, the third estate, the plebeians, the proletariat, the peasantry, the crowd;
the hoi polloi, the lower classes, the common herd, the rabble, the riff-raff, the canaille, the great unwashed, the dregs of society, the ragtag (and bobtail), the proles, the plebs
2 (usually the Mob) North American The Mafia or a similar criminal organization: he gambled at a time when the Mob ran gaming...
- Ruby was a strip club owner, and was said to have connections with the Mob.
- The agency also has been accused of funding con artists and companies linked to the Mob.
- And though Barry has been one of the Mob's more dependable components, he is as capable of playing as wildly, as out of control, as the rest of them.
3Australian /NZ A flock or herd of animals: a mob of cattle...
- One of the first mobs of cattle to be walked down was in 1877, taking about ten weeks.
- It was what New Zealanders call a mob - not a flock - of sheep.
- Well we've got a lovely mob of cattle over here; it's quite a rustic rural scene with the shadows, casting long shadows with the afternoon sun.
verb (mobs, mobbing, mobbed) [with object]
1Crowd round (someone) or into (a place) in an unruly way: he was mobbed by autograph hunters...
- His focus was on the furniture but he hardly got a chance to look at the stuff on display as ecstatic fans practically mobbed him for autographs.
- Nearby, a crowd mobbed a man on a pay phone, screaming at him to get off the phone so that they could call relatives.
- Even before she got out of the airport, she was literally mobbed by the crowd, which included airport staff.
Synonyms
surround, swarm around, besiege, jostle;
harass, set upon, fall on, worry
crowd (into), cram full, fill to overflowing, fill, pack, throng, press into, squeeze into
1.1(Of a group of birds or mammals) surround and attack (a predator or other source of threat) in order to drive it off: a cuckoo flew over, to be mobbed at once by two reed warblers (as noun mobbing) small mammals may indulge in mobbing to rid themselves of a feared killer...
- Swifts will often mob aerial predators such as raptors if they approach a flock.
- Adult terns come over to mob the predator while the chicks take cover in the high grass or in their nests.
- They will also mob predators in flight, gathering into tight flocks and dive-bombing a hawk or other predator.
Derivatives
mobber
- I tried to walk at different paces to the mobbers around me so I wasn't saying hello to the same people all the time.
- More impressive than the successful planning and timing, though, was the number of participants: there must have been three hundred mobbers present.
- One of the mobbers stumbled in front of the Ford.
Origin
Late 17th century: abbreviation of archaic mobile, short for Latin mobile vulgus 'excitable crowd'.