Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use mafia in a sentence

15 example sentences · noun

Mafia means a hierarchically structured secret organisation engaged in illegal activities like distribution of narcotics, gambling and extortion. Example: “If he doesn't pay off the mafia, he’ll wear cement shoes to the bottom of the drink!”

Examples of mafia by meaning

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

  • Worse, it confirms what one always suspected about the 1930s literary mafia, with their graceless posing and relentless self-obsession — what terrible , terrible bores they were.1994, Francis Wheen, Lord Gnome's Literary Companion, page 161
  • Since the victory of gadgetry is "inevitable," you might as well come along quietly and let us smother you in speed and convenience, says the digital mafia.2000, Senator Robert Torricelli, Andrew Carroll, In Our Own Words: Extraordinary Speeches of the American Century, page 432

More sentences with mafia

  • If he doesn't pay off the mafia, he’ll wear cement shoes to the bottom of the drink!From the entry drink
  • Officially it's a dry-cleaning shop, but everyone knows it's a front for the mafia.From the entry front
  • The mafia boss put a contract out on the man who betrayed him.From the entry contract
  • Some of the shopowners were resistant to the extortion, so the mafia did some persuasion.From the entry persuasion
  • He was a son of the mafia system.From the entry son
  • Back in that day, mafias ran the numbers games and there was no such thing as a state lottery.From the entry numbers game
  • They belong to the “Ceusi” mafia clan, a family tied to Catania’s dominant Santopaula clan.2016 July 24, Mark Townsend, “Is Cosa Nostra now selling deadly assault weapons to Islamist terrorist groups?”, in The Guardian. From the entry Catanian
  • As the senior mafia padrone, Luigi Sansone used his four-man mafia team to start collections from Sicilian businesses on the Hill.2011, J.C.R., Sally A. Forehand, J C R Forehand, Murder at the St. Louis Worlds Fair, page 75. From the entry padrone
  • A bid by Donald Trump to build Sydney’s first casino was rejected 30 years ago after police expressed concerns about his links to the mafia.2017 August 16, Christopher Knauss, The Guardian. From the entry casino
  • Mafia mythology has many believe that the method used to eliminate a person is often a reflection of the respect for that individual.2000, Olindo Romeo Chiocca, Mobsters and Thugs: Quotes from the Underworld, page 17. From the entry buckwheat
  • Typically these are artistic, intellectual and bohemian milieus, but also the world of international business and high finance, and some mafias and underworlds.1999, Sami Zubaida, “Cosmopolitanism and the Middle East”, in Roel Meijer, editor, Cosmopolitanism, Identity and Authenticity in the…. From the entry milieu
  • Most scholars writing on the mafia were going to great lengths to demonstrate that it did not exist—and the mobsters wanted to keep their brotherhood secret.2009, Diego Gambetta, Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate, Princeton University Press, published 2009, →ISBN, page 272. From the entry go to great lengths
  • He's the leader of The Blood Family, the ultravicious crime syndicate that moved in and took over in the years that followed John Harder ridding the city of the mafia.2017, Shea Serrano, Basketball (and Other Things). From the entry ultravicious

Meaning of mafia

  1. noun A hierarchically structured secret organisation engaged in illegal activities like distribution of narcotics, gambling and extortion.
  2. noun A crime syndicate.
  3. noun A trusted group of associates, as of a political leader.

Full definition of mafia

Questions about mafia in a sentence

How do you use mafia in a sentence?
Mafia is used as a noun. For example: “If he doesn't pay off the mafia, he’ll wear cement shoes to the bottom of the drink!”
What is a short sentence with mafia?
“He was a son of the mafia system.”
What does mafia mean?
Mafia means a hierarchically structured secret organisation engaged in illegal activities like distribution of narcotics, gambling and extortion.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mafia (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use mafia in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/mafia. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.