Mafia

Meaning

Proper Noun

• An international criminal organization of Sicilian origin operating in Italy and the United States.
• Any organized crime syndicate operating internationally in high-level organized crime; .
• A 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".
• Alternate spelling of mafia

Origin

• From Italian Mafia. Perhaps from Italian mafia ("spirit of hostility to the law") or from Sicilian mafiusu ("boldness, bravado"). See the Wikipedia article for more discussion of the origin of the word.