Cabal

 WORD OF THE DAY

cabal / noun / kuh-BAHL

Definitiono

1a: the contrived schemes of a group of persons secretly united in a plot (as to overturn a government)

1b: a group engaged in such schemes

2: club, group

Examples

"February 14? … That's an arbitrary date picked by a cabal of florists and greeting card manufacturers. Love can happen any time of the year…." 

— Bruce Gravel, Peterborough (Ontario) This Week, 4 Feb. 2021

The New World Order is a contemporary appellation of the centuries-old fear that a secret international cabal is surreptitiously seeking global domination.

— Mike Giglio, The New Yorker, 28 July 2021

Did You Know?

In A Child's History of England, Charles Dickens associates the word cabal with a group of five ministers in the government of England's King Charles II.

The initial letters of the names or titles of those men (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale) spelled cabal, and they have been collectively dubbed as the "Cabal Cabinet" or "Cabal Ministry." 

But these five names are not the source of the word cabal, which was in use decades before Charles II ascended the throne. 

The term traces back to cabbala, the Medieval Latin name for the Kabbalah, a traditional system of esoteric Jewish mysticism. 

Latin borrowed Cabbala from the Hebrew qabbālāh, meaning "received or traditional lore."