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This is a glossary of words related to the Mafia, primarily the Sicilian Mafia and Italian American Mafia. administration: the top-level "management" of an organized crime family -- the boss, underboss and consigliere. [1] associate: one who works with mobsters, but has not been asked to take the vow of Omertà; an almost confirmed, or made guy ...
Slang terms for money often derive from the appearance and features of banknotes or coins, their values, historical associations or the units of currency concerned. Within a language community, some of the slang terms vary in social, ethnic, economic, and geographic strata but others have become the dominant way of referring to the currency and are regarded as mainstream, acceptable language ...
The pizzo (Italian:) is protection money paid to the Mafia often in the form of a forced transfer of money resulting from extortion. The term is derived from the Sicilian pizzu ('beak'). To "let someone wet their beak" (Sicilian language fari vagnari u pizzu) is to pay protection money.
The Italian language is a language with a large set of inflammatory terms and phrases, almost all of which originate from the several dialects and languages of Italy, such as the Tuscan dialect, which had a very strong influence in modern standard Italian, and is widely known to be based on Florentine language. [1]
The term is still used as slang for US dollars in the French-speaking Caribbean islands, most notably Haiti. Piastre is another name for kuruş, 1 ⁄ 100 of the Turkish lira. The piastre is still used in Mauritius when bidding in auction sales, similarly to the way that guineas are used at British racehorse auctions. It is equivalent to 2 ...
The earliest recorded occurrence of the word as slang for money appears to have been in the late 19th century in the United States. The New Oxford Dictionary of English marks the origin as US slang. However, according to the Cassell Dictionary of Slang, [4] the term can be traced back to the mid-19th century in England. Other sources also ...
Pope Francis used a highly derogatory term towards the LGBT community as he reiterated in a closed-door meeting with Italian bishops that gay people should not be allowed to become priests ...
The mobsters in the US were said to have difficulty understanding the Sicilian dialects of the new immigrants, in which words appeared to "zip" by. Other theories include pejorative uses, such as Sicilians' preference for homemade zip guns. According to another theory, the term is a contraction of a Sicilian slang term for "hicks" or "primitives".