Other forms: gangsters
A gangster is a member of an organised criminal band. A notorious gangster, gangster films, dressed like a gangster.
The word belongs to America and to the 1920s, when prohibition created the money that built organised crime — outlawing drink handed a whole industry to people willing to break the law. Gangster films made the figure glamorous almost at once.
1noungangsterA member of an organised criminal band.
“The film follows a young gangster who rises to control the city's nightclubs.”
gangster is a criminal.
Gang plus -ster, recorded from 1884. Gang comes from an Old English word for a going or a set of things that travel together.
Old English
gangan
Middle English
gangen
English
gang
English, today
gangster
From gang + -ster. From gang + ster. 1884. gang comes from Middle English gangen, from Old English gangan. From Middle English gangen, from Old English gangan (“to go, walk, turn out”), from Proto-West Germanic gangan, from Proto-Germanic ganganą (“to go, walk”), from Proto-Indo-European ǵʰengʰ- (“to step, walk”). Cognate with Scots gang (“to go on foot, walk”), Swedish gånga (“to walk, go”), Faroese ganga (“to walk”), Icelandic ganga (“to walk, go”), Norwegian Nynorsk ganga (“to walk, go”), sa-ved जंहस्. Ultimately related to noun, which see below.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA