Library / English Dictionary

MOB

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected forms: mobbed    , mobbing   

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A disorderly crowd of people

Synonyms:

mob; rabble; rout

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("mob" is a kind of...):

crowd (a large number of things or people considered together)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mob"):

lynch mob (a mob that kills a person for some presumed offense without legal authority)

Derivation:

mob (press tightly together or cram)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An association of criminals

Example:

a pack of thieves

Synonyms:

gang; mob; pack; ring

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("mob" is a kind of...):

association (a formal organization of people or groups of people)

Meronyms (members of "mob"):

gangster; mobster (a criminal who is a member of gang)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mob"):

nest (a gang of people (criminals or spies or terrorists) assembled in one locality)

youth gang (a gang whose members are teenagers)

Holonyms ("mob" is a member of...):

gangdom; gangland; organized crime (underworld organizations)

Derivation:

mobster (a criminal who is a member of gang)

Sense 3

Meaning:

A loose affiliation of gangsters in charge of organized criminal activities

Synonyms:

crime syndicate; family; mob; syndicate

Classified under:

Nouns denoting groupings of people or objects

Hypernyms ("mob" is a kind of...):

gangdom; gangland; organized crime (underworld organizations)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mob"):

Cosa Nostra; Maffia; Mafia (a crime syndicate in the United States; organized in families; believed to have important relations to the Sicilian Mafia)

Derivation:

mobster (a criminal who is a member of gang)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Press tightly together or cram

Example:

The crowd packed the auditorium

Synonyms:

jam; mob; pack; pile; throng

Classified under:

Verbs of walking, flying, swimming

Hypernyms (to "mob" is one way to...):

crowd; crowd together (to gather together in large numbers)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s PP

Derivation:

mob (a disorderly crowd of people)

Credits

 Context examples: 

The openings of these huts and the branches of the trees were thronged with a dense mob of ape-people, whom from their size I took to be the females and infants of the tribe.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You talked of expected horrors in London—and instead of instantly conceiving, as any rational creature would have done, that such words could relate only to a circulating library, she immediately pictured to herself a mob of three thousand men assembling in St. George's Fields, the Bank attacked, the Tower threatened, the streets of London flowing with blood, a detachment of the Twelfth Light Dragoons (the hopes of the nation) called up from Northampton to quell the insurgents, and the gallant Captain Frederick Tilney, in the moment of charging at the head of his troop, knocked off his horse by a brickbat from an upper window.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Whilst the two archers were keeping up a brisk fire upon the mob beneath them, Du Guesclin and his lady were consulting with Sir Nigel upon their desperate situation.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You're feeding me because it is the style of feeding just now, because the whole mob is crazy with the idea of feeding Martin Eden.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Then the tribute the mob paid him was a sorry tribute indeed, for that same mob had wallowed "Ephemera" into the mire.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

But the one thing he was not was that colossal appetite that all the mob was bent upon feeding.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Martin remembered how that same world-mob, having read him and acclaimed him and not understood him in the least, had, abruptly, a few months later, flung itself upon him and torn him to pieces.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)