Madonna was stopped dead in her tracks by the strapping 30-year-old auteur of the nouvelle vague gangster movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, an eye-popping directorial debut.
—
Hamish Bowles,
Vogue,
5 July 2026
Yet Francis Ford Coppola's original sprawling gangster epic is undeniable.
In the past decade, the leadership of the Kinahan organization has become rich and cosmopolitan, and their life styles have started to resemble those of international businessmen more than of street hoodlums.
—
Ed Caesar,
New Yorker,
30 Apr. 2026
The Knesset recently legalized the death penalty for Arabs who murder Jews, but not for the hoodlum Israeli settlers who have been killing West Bank residents to seize their land.
—
Sun Sentinel Editorial Board,
Sun Sentinel,
17 Apr. 2026
Fortunately, Dusse lightens the lawyer’s spiral into his mobster client’s dark underworld with wry humor and pointed skewering of both the wellness industry and the criminal legal profession.
—
The Know,
Denver Post,
5 July 2026
Famous former inmates include mobster Whitey Bulger and, rather surprisingly, Henry David Thoreau.
Hawkeye tussles with the Russian mafioso trying to drive residents out of his building, plus meets – and, to a degree, passes the bow-and-arrow to – young heroine Kate Bishop.
—
Brian Truitt,
USA Today,
8 July 2026
Even as mafioso talk took hold on Views and What a Time to Be Alive, romantic melodrama seemed to be the default setting.
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.