Goombah
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Goombah (sometimes Goomba) is a slang term regional mostly to the New York area (and certain other Northeast US areas) used to describe an Italian-American. It can be mildly derogatory, but not on the same level as dago, guinea or wop.
This slang term probably originates from the Italian word compare (or the Sicilian cognate, "cumpari", both akin to Spanish compadre), which was already (and still is) used in south Italy abbreviated in cumpà and literally means "friend" and it is used colloquially mainly to address people living in the same town. This, changed through the Italo-American tendency to substitute g's for c's and b's for p's in colloquial speech, yields "goombah."
Steve Schirripa, who became famous playing Bobby Baccalieri on the HBO TV series The Sopranos, introduced the term to a national audience by publishing a series of books starting with A Goomba's Guide to Life (ISBN 1-4000-4639-4). It appears in popular fiction at least as early as Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" (1969), in which the character Jack Woltz refers to "guinea Mafia goombahs."
It should be noted that, in current slang, "goombah" often implies a level of disrepute or violent nature; the term is often used in pop-culture situations to refer to "hired muscle" in Mafia-related media.
