Borrowed fromItalianmafia, 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. SeeSicilianmafia for more. See, also,the Wikipedia article for more discussion of the origin of the word.Doublet ofmafiya.
TheMob: any particularmafia, 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).
Any other specific organized crimesyndicate operating internationally in high-levelorganized crime;often with a modifying adjective, such as a nationality.
(games) Asocial deductionparty game modelling aconflict between an informedminority (the mafia) and an uninformedmajority (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".
