How to Use the Mafia in a Sentence

the Mafia

noun
Definition of the Mafianext
  • Many of the people left in the Mafia here are aged or in prison, and the status of the local mob has been questioned.
    — Mary Zahn and Bill Janz, Journal Sentinel, 17 Jan. 2024
  • Did the Mafia want a bargaining chip to help free a member from prison?
    — Tom Mashberg, New York Times, 18 Mar. 2024
  • What Rudy and Cuomo shared was the fact that they were expected to speak as Italians about the Mafia.
    — Dan McLaughlin, National Review, 14 Jan. 2024
  • Part of what made The Sopranos resonate with its audience was this sense of the Mafia amid the mundane.
    — Christian Schneider, National Review, 21 Dec. 2023
  • This is a heavy-handed use of a law originally written for the Mafia.
    — The Editors, National Review, 16 Aug. 2023
  • That’s always the tough thing with talking about (the Mafia), because nearly 100% of Mafia members are Sicilian.
    — Journal Sentinel, 17 Jan. 2024
  • Into the 1980s, historians note, they were often controlled by the Mafia.
    — Architectural Digest, 28 June 2024
  • Shortly after, the Earl disappeared, and the press began speculating that he’d been abducted by the Mafia to force him to hand over his wealth.
    — Manori Ravindran, Variety, 27 Feb. 2023
  • The note was a directive from the highest ranking member of the Mafia to assault staff at the jail, according to the Attorney's Office release.
    — Elena Santa Cruz, The Arizona Republic, 22 Aug. 2023
  • How might a hotter summer impact the Mafia’s waste-disposal work—and would Tony Soprano talk about it in his therapy sessions?
    — Katharine Gammon, The Atlantic, 16 Mar. 2023
  • For years, gangsters and builders had bribed and threatened politicians in Rome to win contracts for municipal construction projects and services, known as the Mafia Capitale case.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 18 Sep. 2023
  • Like the Mafia, the Sherzai and Karzai families control economic and political favors throughout the province.
    — Michael O'Hanlon, Foreign Affairs, 1 Sep. 2010
  • Before the Mafia’s disintegration, a boss was obliged to help a fallen or legally entangled soldier.
    — David Remnick, The New Yorker, 22 Aug. 2023
  • Hundreds of people, including a former lawmaker, were sentenced to prison in a trial that prosecutors said dealt a crucial blow to the Mafia in southern Italy.
    — Kevin Roose, New York Times, 21 Nov. 2023
  • The militias, compared by some to vigilantes in Mexico or the Mafia in Italy, fill the void left by a state that is either unwilling or unable to provide security or even basic services in many of the city’s impoverished slums.
    — Paulina Villegas, Washington Post, 26 Sep. 2023
  • Whatever the cause, Italian media's efforts to portray the Mafia remain more incisive and realistic than those produced in America.
    — Selwyn Raab, Foreign Affairs, 25 June 2012
  • The authorities had suspected the Mafia’s involvement, but the case remained unsolved and the investigation closed until Mr. Asaro was arrested in 2014, linking him and the Bonanno crime family to the robbery.
    — Sam Roberts, New York Times, 27 Oct. 2023
  • The main theory investigators pursued was that the Mafia killed Hoffa to prevent him from disclosing mob infiltration of the Teamsters, including its tapping into the union's pension fund to finance its rackets.
    — Jamie L. Lareau, Detroit Free Press, 28 June 2024
  • The Georgia law closely resembles its federal counterpart and was created to ensnare large criminal organizations like the Mafia.
    — Zoe Guy, Vulture, 11 June 2024
  • Valachi was a Genovese family soldier with a sociological bent who explained the Mafia’s hierarchies and structures in granular detail to a congressional committee in 1963 after landing in prison for peddling heroin.
    — Timothy Noah, The New Republic, 27 Mar. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'the Mafia.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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