mobster
Americannoun
-
mobsters
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of mobster
1915–20, mob 1 (in the sense “a member of a criminal gang”)+ -ster
Explanation
A mobster is a bad guy who's involved in organized crime or belongs to a gang. There are many movies about mobsters that take place in the 1920s and 30s. As opposed to individual criminals, members of crime syndicates and gangs belong to a large, structured criminal organization. Someone who belongs to such a group is a mobster or a gangster. The term mobster comes from mob, another name for the Mafia, an Italian organized crime group. Originally mob meant just "a large group of people" or "the common people," from the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, "fickle common people."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The Russian mobster decides that the brother-sister act—she pugnacious, he perpetually panic-stricken—can be useful.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 9, 2026
As the mobster Hyman Roth and Michael Corleone plot to take over even more of a Cuba on the verge of revolution, Roth says:
From Salon ● Mar. 24, 2026
In “The Mask,” also released in 1994, he played mobster Dorian Tyrell, antagonist to Jim Carrey’s Stanley Ipkiss, a.k.a. the Mask.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 19, 2026
"It feels really nice, and life goes on," the ageing mobster told local media outside a Melbourne courthouse.
From Barron's ● Feb. 5, 2026
In return for a favor to some white mobster, my new boss and his wife had just been given a six- months numbers banking privilege for the Bronx railroad area called Motthaven Yards.
From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey
Rocky Balboa is a stumblebum club fighter making $65 a fight and working on the side as collection man for small-time mobsters.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
But Morano, the councilman, is adamant that "this is not just a place that should be known for landfills and mobsters."
From Barron's ● Feb. 13, 2026
He drank tall glasses of orange juice in seedy dives as he infiltrated an underworld of bank-robbing clowns and bird-obsessed mobsters.
From Salon ● Jan. 23, 2026
After McCarthy was discredited, Roy Cohn came back to New York and he acquired all kinds of clients; mobsters, nightclub owners, businessmen.
From Slate ● Sep. 4, 2024
American mobsters hated Castro for shutting down the casinos they’d been running in Cuba.
From "Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown" by Steve Sheinkin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
