Word.ws English Dictionary

MS-13

MS-13 proper noun: mara Salvatrucha, a criminal gang operating in some Salvadoran communities in Central and North America.

Proper noun

MS-13

  1. (organized crime) Mara Salvatrucha, a criminal gang operating in some Salvadoran communities in Central and North America.
    • While MS-13 is not the only transnational gang this administration will target, we believe the following background information attributed as “information provided by the Justice Department” will be helpful: […]2017 April 18, “DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FACT SHEET ON MS-13”, in United States Department of Justice, page 1
    • The executive order specifically named Tren de Aragua and the Salvadoran MS-13 gang, citing their “campaigns of violence and terror in the United States and internationally” as threats to “the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere.”2025 January 31, Stefano Pozzebon, “Rubio and Bukele to discuss sending suspected gang members from US to El Salvador”, in CNN

Origin of MS-13

Initialism of Mara Salvatrucha. The 13 stands for the letter M for Mexican Mafia.

Words formed from MS-13

Questions about MS-13

What does MS-13 mean?
MS-13 means mara Salvatrucha, a criminal gang operating in some Salvadoran communities in Central and North America.
What part of speech is MS-13?
MS-13 is a proper noun.

Words near MS-13 in the dictionary

  1. Ms Presidents
  2. Ms Right
  3. Ms Rights
  4. Ms Wrong
  5. Ms Wrongs
  6. MS-13
  7. MS-13er
  8. MS-13ers
  9. MS-DOS
  10. ms.
  11. Ms. Claus

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: MS-13 (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “MS-13.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ms-13. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.