mafia

name

1. The Mob: any particular mafia, mentioned uniquely within the discussion's established or implicit context, usually and especially the Sicilian-Italian–Italian-American one (especially in American English) but occasionally others (e.g., the Russian one, the Japanese one).
2. The Mob: any particular mafia, mentioned uniquely within the discussion's established or implicit context, usually and especially the Sicilian-Italian–Italian-American one (especially in American English) but occasionally others (e.g., the Russian one, the Japanese one).

   “Somehow he managed to upset the Russian Mafia.”

3. A social deduction party game modelling a conflict between an informed minority (the mafia) and an uninformed majority (the innocents). Each player is secretly assigned a role within one of these teams, and the innocents attempt to identify the mafia members before they are all "murdered".

noun

1. A hierarchically structured secret organisation engaged in illegal activities like distribution of narcotics, gambling and extortion.
2. A crime syndicate.
3. A trusted group of associates, as of a political leader.
4. (in-compounds)An entity which attempts to control a specified arena by violence or threats.

   “moral mafia”

   “Worse, it confirms what one always suspected about the 1930s literary mafia, with their graceless posing and relentless self-obsession — what terrible , terrible bores they were.”

   “Since the victory of gadgetry is "inevitable," you might as well come along quietly and let us smother you in speed and convenience, says the digital mafia.”

   “I can scarcely leave the apartment without being engulfed by journalists, not to mention the fucking left-wing activists and the multicultural mafia that assailed me with spitting and verbal abuse the last time I ventured out […]”