mob
Pluralmobs
Pluralmobs
- 1A crowd of people that is large or unruly, especially one intent on rioting or causing destruction.
The mob surged toward the palace gates, shouting for the king to appear.
Police struggled to hold back the mob as it pushed through the barriers.
Similarcrowd, horde, rabble, throng, pack
Note
The core sense, and its name is a judgment: a clipping of Latin mobile vulgus, "the fickle crowd." What makes a group of people into one is unpredictability and the threat of disorder, not size alone. James Madison relies on exactly that in Federalist No. 55 (1788). Even an assembly of Socrateses, he argues, would still be one, because the number of people, not their quality, decides it.
- 2A syndicate of professional criminals, such as the Mafia, that runs organized crime.
Federal agents spent years building a case against the mob.
She wrote a book about how the mob infiltrated local unions.
Similarmafia, syndicate, underworld
Note
The underworld sense, where a capital letter makes a difference. Lowercase, it means any organized gang; capitalized as the Mob, it means a specific organization such as the Mafia. It works well as a modifier, as in "a mob killing" in Paul Chadwick's Concrete (1986). Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood's The Bat (1926) gives the idiom for belonging: its loner "didn't run with a mob."
- 3To gather in a crowd around someone, sometimes pressing in with hostility.
Protesters mobbed the official as he tried to reach his car.
Excited supporters mob the players whenever the team wins at home.
Similarsurround, besiege, swarm, crowd, throng
Note
Here the crowding is aimed at a person, and the hostility is optional: fans mob their idols as readily as protesters mob an official. The verb is especially common in the passive. Alexis Petridis, covering Glastonbury in 2017, writes that the opposition leader's Land Rover "was mobbed by fans." The object can be whatever carries the person, a car included. For crowding a place, see the sense for packed venues.
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- 6A computer-controlled character in a video game, especially one that exists to be fought or killed to advance the game.
The dungeon was packed with mobs guarding the treasure.
Players must clear every mob before the boss appears.
Similarmobile
Note
Gamers' shorthand with an origin of its own. Richard Bartle used mobile for objects that could move in an early MUD, the clipped form stuck, and mobile remains a synonym. It is a countable noun: players clear every mob, or, as a player called Wolfie put it on alt.games.everquest in 2002, "zerg the mob" with sheer numbers. No crowd is implied, because one monster is one mob.
- 7A group of kangaroos living or moving together.
A mob of kangaroos grazed near the highway at sunrise.
The ranger counted more than forty animals in a single mob.
Similartroop
- 8In Aboriginal Australian usage, a group of people connected through an extended family, clan, or wider community, and associated with a particular place or country.
The elder spoke on behalf of his mob during the land negotiations.
Many in her mob still gather for ceremonies on their traditional country.
Similarclan, people, community, kin
Note
A word of belonging rather than of crowds: it names the people one comes from, tied to kin and to country. It usually follows a people's name or an identity word, as in "the Noongar mob" or Claire G. Coleman's "blak mob" (2021). Nothing of the unruly crowd carries over, so a reader should hear no disorder in it. Here, "my mob" means my people.
- 9Abbreviation of mobile phone. British, informal.
She texted from her mob during the break.
My mob ran out of battery halfway through the trip.
Note
A clipping of a clipping: mobile phone was shortened to mobile, and mobile to this. It inflects as an ordinary noun, plural mobs, and shares only its spelling with the crowd sense. One collision is worth knowing: "my mob" can also mean one's people in the Aboriginal Australian sense. Where both readings are possible, the full word mobile is safer.
- 10A group of emus living or traveling together.
A mob of emus raced alongside the truck for a while.
The drought scattered the local mob of emus across the plain.
Similarflock
- 11A loose, frilled cloth cap with a gathered crown, worn indoors by women, chiefly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
She pinned a lace-trimmed mob over her curls before greeting the guests.
In the portrait, the old woman wears a starched white mob.
Note
Short for mob cap, and from the same mab as the obsolete insult, not from the crowd word. Used alone it takes an ordinary plural. Oliver Goldsmith, writing to Mrs Bunbury around 1773–1774, describes women who "cover their faces with mobs." Today the full form mob cap is clearer, since the bare word is easily heard as a crowd.
- 12The common people of a society, especially the lower classes; the rabble.
The pamphlet warned that power should never be handed to the mob.
A cluster of mob, who were making themselves merry with their betters.
1715, Joseph Addison, “The Free-holder: No. 44. Saturday, May 21. [1715.]”Note
An older, class-bound use in which the word names a social stratum rather than a gathering. It can stand without an article, like a mass noun: Joseph Addison writes in 1715 of "a cluster of mob" making merry with their betters. Today the sense lives mainly in older prose. In new writing, the mob almost always means a disorderly crowd, and any class contempt has to come from context.
- 13Chiefly in Japanese media such as anime and manga, any background character in a story, as distinct from the main cast.
Every mob in the anime's classroom scene was drawn with minimal detail.
In the manga's later chapters, even the mobs standing behind the leads were given distinct faces.
Similarextra
Note
Where the gaming sense means something to fight, this one means anyone who simply fills the frame: classmates, passersby, the people standing behind the leads. It belongs chiefly to Japanese media such as anime and manga. The defining contrast is with the main cast: a figure drawn with little detail because the story is not about them.
- 14A prostitute or a woman disparaged as sexually promiscuous or immoral.
Note
A word of insult that has dropped out of the language, with a history of its own: it is an alteration of mab, not a shortening of mobile like the "crowd" meaning. The two simply share a spelling. In an older text, read it as a slur aimed at one woman rather than at a throng. It has no place in present-day writing outside quotation or deliberate period pastiche.
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Practice
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Origins
From Middle English 'mob', a shortening of 'mobile', from Latin 'mōbile (vulgus)' meaning 'fickle crowd'. The video-gaming sense comes from English 'mobile', used by Richard Bartle for objects capable of movement in an early MUD.
An alteration of 'mab'.
An abbreviation of 'mobile'.