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| capable of being permeated. |
| not easily governed, managed, or directed |
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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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- Theories about the tightly knit neocon cabal came in waves.
- We are not going to allow a right-wing cabal to run our president out of office amid a chorus of trash-talk from the media.
- Anybody who attacks the secret subject is, by definition, part of the cabal.
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cabal
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cabal
a private organization or party engaged in secret intrigues; also, the intrigues themselves. In England the word was used during the 17th century to describe any secret or extralegal council of the king, especially the foreign committee of the Privy Council. The term took on its present invidious meaning from a group of five ministers chosen in 1667 by King Charles II (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley Cooper [later earl of Shaftesbury], and Lauderdale), whose initial letters coincidentally spelled cabal. This cabal, never very unified in its members' aims and sympathies, fell apart by 1672; Shaftesbury even became one of Charles II's fiercest opponents.
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