Link Centre Dictionary

Mafia

ma·fia

UK/ˈmæfi.ə/ US/ˈmɑfi.ə/ fairly common

noun

1.

a crime syndicate in the United States; organized in families; believed to have important relations to the Sicilian Mafia

Synonyms
2.
3.

any tightly knit group of trusted associates

Synonyms

Origin

Borrowed from Italian mafia, of uncertain origin. In the first instance, it is not clear whether the lemma in question is a Sicilian exonym or endonym, since written and oral sources on this term are scarce, the etymology remains uncertain and it's worthy of further investigation. It is possibly a regional term of the then recently established Kingdom of Italy; thus the meaning "spirit of hostility to the law" could be just derivative. The hypotheses put forward have been varied, but not very convincing from a reconstructive point of view. See Sicilian mafia for more. See, also, the Wikipedia article for more discussion of the origin of the word. Doublet of mafiya.

Phrases

  • alphabet mafia
  • Kosher Mafia
  • mafia hypothesis
  • mafia state
  • rainbow mafia

Related words

Broader terms

Part of

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.