Mafia
/ˈmafɪə
/noun
1 (the Mafia) [treated as singular or plural] An organized international body of criminals, operating originally in Sicily and now especially in Italy and the US and having a complex and ruthless behavioural code.Where Mafia and drug barons rule, investigators of any kind become targets....
- Under Italian criminal law it is a criminal offence to be a member of the Mafia.
- Women in the Mafia have been documented as a rising trend in Italy's criminal underworld.
1.1 (mafia) Any organized group of criminals resembling the Mafia in its way of operating: the rise of criminal mafias in Russian and Eastern Europe...
- Smuggling, bribery, protection rackets and the rise of criminal mafias are some of the common symptoms of rigidly controlled economies.
- Often sex rackets and drug mafias operate under the veil of these centres.
- There must be a solid hierarchy and system of protection safeguarded by organized crime syndicates or mafia.
1.2 (mafia) A group regarded as exerting a hidden sinister influence: the British literary mafia...
- Leaving the court mafia intact would make the fight against corruption useless.
- Thieves, vandals, and con artists appeared, and online mafias emerged.
- Sandalwood mafias thrive due to the political patronage.
Origin
Italian (Sicilian dialect), originally in the sense 'bragging'.
Rhymes
- immiserize
- immitigable
- immitigably
- immittance
- patresfamilias
- patria
- patrial
- patrialisation
- patrialism
- patriality
- patria potestas
- patriarch
- patriarchal
- patriarchal cross
- patriarchalism
- patriarchalist
- patriarchally
- patriarchate
- patriarchess
- patriarchic
- patriarchically
- patriarchism
- Patriarchist
- patriarchship
- patriarchy