mob
pronunciation
How to pronounce mob in British English:
UK [mɒb]
How to pronounce mob in American English:
US [mɑːb]
-
- Noun:
- a disorderly crowd of people
- a loose affiliation of gangsters in charge of organized criminal activities
- an association of criminals
-
- Verb:
- press tightly together or cram
Word Origin
- mob
- mob: [17] Mob is famous as one of the then new ‘slang’ abbreviations against which Joseph Addison and Jonathan Swift inveighed at the beginning of the 18th century (others included pozz for positively and rep for reputation). Mob was short for mobile, which itself was a truncated form of mobile vulgus, a Latin phrase meaning ‘fickle crowd’. Latin mōbilis ‘movable’, hence metaphorically ‘fickle’ (source of English mobile [15]), came from the base of the verb movēre ‘move’ (source of English move).=> mobile, move
- mob (v.)
- "to attack in a mob," 1709, from mob (n.). Meaning "to form into a mob" is from 1711. Related: Mobbed; mobbing.
- mob (n.)
- 1680s, "disorderly part of the population, rabble," slang shortening of mobile, mobility "common people, populace, rabble" (1670s, probably with a conscious play on nobility), from Latin mobile vulgus "fickle common people" (the phrase attested c. 1600 in English), from mobile, neuter of mobilis "fickle, movable, mobile" (see mobile (adj.)). In Australia and New Zealand, used without disparagement for "a crowd." Meaning "gang of criminals working together" is from 1839, originally of thieves or pick-pockets; American English sense of "organized crime in general" is from 1927. The Mob was not a synonym for the Mafia. It was an alliance of Jews, Italians, and a few Irishmen, some of them brilliant, who organized the supply, and often the production, of liquor during the thirteen years, ten months, and nineteen days of Prohibition. ... Their alliance -- sometimes called the Combination but never the Mafia -- was part of the urgent process of Americanizing crime. [Pete Hamill, "Why Sinatra Matters," 1998] Mob scene "crowded place" first recorded 1922.
Example
- 1. On the other side is an old-fashioned mob .
- 2. Victims of the internet mob still have a glimmer of hope .
- 3. President jackson was warned that a mob could march on washington .
- 4. Anyone who 's seen an angry mob knows it .
- 5. More sinister is the involvement of the heavy mob .