Word of the Day Archive
Thursday March 17, 2005
cabal \kuh-BAHL; kuh-BAL\ , noun:
1. A secret, conspiratorial association of plotters or intriguers whose purpose is usually to bring about an overturn especially in public affairs.
2. The schemes or plots of such an association.
intransitive verb:
1. To form a cabal; to conspire; to intrigue; to plot.
If you constantly disagreed with Winters, he wrote you out of his cabal, his conspiracy against the poetry establishment.
-- Richard Elman, Namedropping: Mostly Literary Memoirs
My father always had been a collector. There were the stamps, National Geographics, scrapbooks filled with his favorite political cartoons, and booklets justifying his belief that the world was under the control of a global cabal of elites unified by such organizations as the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Freemasons.
-- Frederick Kempe, Father/Land
But the new world of toys is by no means simply the product of a profit-mad cabal of toy pushers discovering new ways of exploiting the child market.
-- Gary Cross, Kids' Stuff
The Anti-Federalists were not simply concerned that Congress was too small relatively--too small to be truly representative of the great diversity of the nation. Congress was also too small absolutely--too small to be immune from cabal and intrigue.
-- Akhil Reed Amar, The Bill of Rights
Cabal derives from Medieval Latin cabala, a transliteration of Hebrew qabbalah, "received," hence "traditional, lore," from qabal, "to receive." The evolution in sense is: "(secret) tradition, secret, secret plots or intrigues, secret meeting, secret meeters, a group of plotters or intriguers."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for cabal
