Underboss

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An assistant to the boss of a crime family

    "An alleged "underboss" of the Bonanno family, Carmine Galante, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison […]"

  2. 2
    an assistant or second-in-command to a chief (especially in a crime syndicate) wordnet

Example

More examples

"An alleged "underboss" of the Bonanno family, Carmine Galante, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison […]"

Etymology

From under- + boss, calque of the Italian sotto capo

Related phrases

crime family

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.