Pronounced: ih-SKOOCH-uhn, noun
Notes: This word is vaguely familiar to me, but I could not define it
Yesterday’s word
The word camorra means “a secret group united for unscrupulous purposes”
First usage
Our word came into English in the mid-1800s
Background / Comments
The only place I remember running across this word is in the Lord Peter Wimsey short story The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man with No Face by Dorothy Sayers. In a railway car, a group of people from various walks of life discuss a news item about a man found dead on a beach with his face badly cut about. One man suggests a “Gamorrah” may have been behind it, which is our word misunderstood. Our word comes from Camorra, which was a secret organization in Naples, Italy, engaged in criminal activities. The word might have come into Italian from the Spanish word camorra (fight).
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 