Black Hand

Origin

Black Hand

noun
1.
Italian, La Mano Nera. any of various secret criminal groups organized in Italy and operating in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, practicing blackmail and violence.
2.
an anarchistic society in Spain, suppressed in 1883.
3.
a nationalistic society in Serbia, suppressed in 1914.
Black·hand·er, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Black Hand is always a great word to know.
So is interrobang. Does it mean:
a calculus or concretion found in the stomach or intestines of certain animals, esp. ruminants, formerly reputed to be an effective remedy for poison.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
Collins
World English Dictionary
Black Hand
 
n
1.  a group of Sicilian blackmailers and terrorists formed in the 1870s and operating in the US in the early 20th century
2.  (in 19th-century Spain) an organization of anarchists

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Etymonline
Word Origin & History

Black Hand
Italian immigrant secret society in U.S., 1904; earlier a Spanish anarchist society, both from the warning mark they displayed to potential victims; from black + hand.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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