How to Use mafioso in a Sentence

mafioso

noun
  • Every great mafioso album needs a great crime caper of a song.
    — Troy L. Smith, cleveland, 13 Apr. 2021
  • The mafioso-style form of Carr’s threat has been widely noted.
    — Onkar Ghate, Oc Register, 26 Sep. 2025
  • Meanwhile, in Russia, oligarchs and mafioso were on the ascent.
    — Craig Unger, The Hive, 13 Aug. 2017
  • Once the mafioso is dead, Oraetta uses her mouth to remove a ring from his cold dead hand, and places it on her own finger.
    — Nick Schager, EW.com, 28 Sep. 2020
  • That didn’t stop him from continuing to report on the mafia and taking a number of the mafiosi who threatened him to court.
    — Gaia Pianigiani, New York Times, 20 May 2018
  • But when Oz delivers his old ring—pinched from Alberto’s corpse—the mafioso is taken off guard.
    — Erik Kain, Forbes, 20 Sep. 2024
  • Some wineries will relish the opportunity to be seen as the mafioso’s beverage of choice.
    — Esther Mobley, San Francisco Chronicle, 9 Feb. 2023
  • Paul Sorvino could play more than a mobster, even though mafioso roles became standards in his prolific career.
    — Los Angeles Times, 25 July 2022
  • This was always the mafioso-like logic at the heart of Trumpism, and its latest expression could not be more garishly clear.
    — Jacob Silverman, The New Republic, 7 July 2021
  • The Vatican/mafioso entanglements remain murky and a little flat.
    — Michael Phillips, chicagotribune.com, 3 Dec. 2020
  • But Venezuela’s mafioso socialist regime, including the military, is digging in to keep Maduro in power.
    — Tim Padgett, Sun Sentinel, 11 Aug. 2024
  • Bill Camp is marvelously reptilian as a Brooklyn mafioso who lures them into an uneasy cross-borough alliance.
    — Los Angeles Times, 7 Aug. 2019
  • Bill Camp is marvelously reptilian as a Brooklyn mafioso who lures them into an uneasy cross-borough alliance.
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 8 Aug. 2019
  • Ghostface has a knack for emotional honesty and upbeat absurdism that’s matched by Raekwon’s sterner, harsher mafioso tales.
    — Craig Jenkins, Vulture, 3 June 2021
  • Though Dickie never appeared on the show, he was occasionally mentioned with admiration as a wild-card mafioso of decades past.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 28 Sep. 2021
  • To prepare for the role of Dickie, a mafioso whose charisma conceals a jumble of violent and tender urges, Nivola spent months with a dialect coach.
    — Naomi Fry, The New Yorker, 18 Sep. 2021
  • Where Biggie rapped as a mafioso who had lieutenants working for him, Black Rob talked about having a small crew of dudes that would rob folks in underground tunnels.
    — Jayson Buford, Rolling Stone, 20 Apr. 2021
  • Ostensibly, Fulmer was Tennessee's AD during that time, but that was about as genuine as a mafioso's olive oil business.
    — Blake Toppmeyer, The Tennessean, 28 Mar. 2024
  • The movie stars Jennifer Tilly as a mafioso’s girlfriend, and Gina Gershon as the ex-convict hired to do renovations on their apartment.
    — Aimée Lutkin, ELLE, 7 June 2022
  • While De Niro has a somewhat rough time shifting between macho mafioso and weepy sentimentalist, Crystal is more consistent as feisty Ben.
    — David Hunter, The Hollywood Reporter, 5 Mar. 2020
  • Clean-cut, with a penchant for oversized glasses and black clothing, Shulaya, who was from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, looked more tech bro than mafioso.
    — Garrett Graff, Longreads, 5 June 2018
  • Joseph Valachi was a member of the Genovese crime family and the first American mafioso to publicly confirm the existence of Cosa Nostra.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 13 May 2026
  • Its portrayal of the LAPD is a sordid one, in which the police have become a mafioso-like organization willing to do anything for the highest bidder.
    — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 25 June 2020
  • Unsurprisingly, as with many post-Soviet regimes in places like Uzbekistan, Russia, and Kazakhstan, the notion of the first family as mafiosi has gained increasing cachet over the past few years.
    — Casey Michel, New Republic, 14 July 2017
  • The most gruesome is the most ludicrous — either McCall pushing the pressure points in a fiend’s hand (warning of his bowel evacuation) or McCall plunging a pistol into a mafioso’s eye socket.
    — Armond White, National Review, 1 Sep. 2023
  • The builders’ alternating harassment and bribery leaves Cook with little recourse, especially when mafioso-like representatives begin dropping by at all hours, leading to dry exchanges — what little dialogue the film has is extremely funny.
    — Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 19 Feb. 2026
  • What began in 1991 as a nonprofit safe haven for MCs has become a global brand — and on a summer night in Brooklyn, Lyricist Lounge’s legacy collided with Raekwon’s mafioso rap classic.
    — Ime Ekpo, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025
  • The third season of Tulsa King found Dwight squaring off against the violent (and desperate) Dunmire clan, as well as a vicious New York mafioso called Quiet Ray (James Russo) and an FBI agent with an ax to grind (Kevin Pollak).
    — Randall Colburn, Entertainment Weekly, 23 Nov. 2025
  • On Saturday, August 9, Prospect Park welcomed with classic rap enthusiasts spanning the ‘80s, ‘90s, early 2000s to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Wu-Tang Clan member Raekwon’s solo debut, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx — staple of mafioso rap, and widely regarded as one of hip-hop’s greatest albums.
    — Ime Ekpo, Forbes.com, 12 Aug. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'mafioso.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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