Mafia

Meanings

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 international criminal organization of Sicilian origin operating in Italy and the United States.
3. Any other specific organized crime syndicate operating internationally in high-level organized crime; often with a modifying adjective, such as a nationality.

1. 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".

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. An entity which attempts to control a specified arena by violence or threats.

Etymology

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.