Omertà is a code of silence associated with the Sicilian Mafia and other Southern Italian criminal organizations. It means refusing to cooperate with the police or the courts, and never relying on the state for help, even when you are the victim of a crime. Inside the Mafia, breaking it has traditionally been punished by death.
In English the word is often written without the accent, as omerta, and it has spread well beyond organized crime to describe any group that closes ranks and refuses to talk.
What does omertà literally mean? #
Nobody is completely sure, and the etymology is still argued over. Wikipedia’s article on omertà lays out the main theories:
| Theory | The idea |
|---|---|
| From “man” | Sicilian omu (“man”), possibly influenced by Spanish hombredad (“manliness”). Omertà would then mean behaving “like a man”: handling your own affairs and never going to the authorities. |
| From “humility” | Latin humilitas became Italian umiltà, which shifted to omertà in southern dialects. The “humility” is submission to the group’s rules. |
In the 1970s, Italy’s parliamentary Antimafia Commission accepted the omu (“man”) explanation, relying on the work of Antonio Cutrera, a former public security officer who wrote one of the early studies of the Mafia.
How do you pronounce omertà? #
Say it oh-mehr-TAH, with the stress on the last syllable. In Italian, the accent on the final à marks exactly that stress.
What did omertà demand? #
At its core, omertà was a flat ban on cooperating with the state. Wikipedia summarizes it as “the categorical prohibition of cooperation with state authorities or reliance on its services, even when one has been victim of a crime.” In practice that meant:
- Never give evidence to police or testify in court, including against rivals
- Never report a crime done to you or your family; settle it privately or not at all
- Never acknowledge that the organization exists
- Accept prison rather than trade information for a lighter sentence
Cutrera recorded a saying that captures the attitude, supposedly spoken by a wounded man about the person who attacked him: “If I live, I’ll kill you. If I die, I forgive you.” Either way, the police hear nothing.
The code reached people outside the Mafia too. In towns where the organization held power, witnesses stayed silent out of fear as much as loyalty, which is why prosecutors struggled for decades to get anyone to testify.
Where did omertà come from? #
Historians trace it to Southern Italy, and above all Sicily, where it grew out of centuries of foreign rule and a state that ordinary people had little reason to trust. Wikipedia cites evidence that it existed “at least as far back as the 16th century as a way of opposing Spanish rule.” The Mafia itself emerged in 19th-century Sicily and turned that older habit of silence into a rule enforced with violence (Wikipedia: Sicilian Mafia).
Who broke omertà? #
For decades the code held well enough that investigators knew little about how the Mafia was organized. Then a few members started talking:
- Joseph Valachi (1963). A member of what’s now called the Genovese family, Valachi testified before Senator John McClellan’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1963 and became the first member of the Italian-American Mafia to publicly acknowledge it existed. He also popularized the name Cosa Nostra (Wikipedia).
- Leonardo Vitale (1973). A Sicilian mafioso who turned himself in and confessed, only to be judged mentally ill. His evidence led to few convictions.
- Tommaso Buscetta (1984). After relatives were killed in the Second Mafia War, Buscetta was extradited from Brazil and began cooperating with the investigating judge Giovanni Falcone. His account of Cosa Nostra’s structure underpinned the Maxi Trial in Palermo, which convicted 338 defendants (Wikipedia).
The Italian word for these collaborators is pentito, “one who has repented.” By 1992, more than a thousand mafiosi had agreed to cooperate with Italian prosecutors. We tell the full story, from the Kefauver hearings to the 1992 assassinations, in the real history of the mafia code of silence.
How is the word used today? #
Outside Italy, omertà now works as a metaphor. Journalists use it for a sports team, a police department or a company where people cover for each other and nobody talks to outsiders. Mario Puzo helped make it familiar to English readers: The Godfather (1969) put the word in front of millions, and the last novel he completed himself was titled Omertà, published in 2000 after his death. We cover that book in Omertà by Mario Puzo.
Why does omertà work so well in romance? #
A code of silence is a ready-made conflict. A character who loves someone inside the family has to decide what to tell, what to hide and whose side to stand on, and the story can keep asking that question for hundreds of pages. It pairs naturally with forbidden love, the undercover love interest and the heroine carrying a secret she can’t share.
Omerta, an interactive mafia romance told in text messages, builds its whole premise on that idea. Its tagline is “In this family, silence is the rule. Breaking it is the story,” and your choices about who you protect and what you conceal carry across episodes. Check the app’s site for current availability. For more of the vocabulary these stories borrow, see Italian words in mafia romance.
Frequently asked questions #
Is omertà Italian or Sicilian? #
Both. Omertà is the standard Italian word, and the concept is most closely tied to Sicily, which is also where the theory linking it to omu (“man”) comes from. It’s associated with other parts of Southern Italy as well.
Does omertà still exist? #
It has weakened a lot. Since the 1980s, Italy has relied heavily on pentiti, and witness protection gives former members a reason to talk. Wikipedia describes today’s Cosa Nostra as operating at reduced strength and with less violence, though still active in extortion, drug trafficking and money laundering.
What happened to people who broke omertà? #
Within the Mafia, the traditional punishment was death, and many informants’ relatives were murdered in reprisal. Governments responded with protection programs: Italian pentiti can receive a new identity and money to start over, and Buscetta spent his last years in the U.S. Witness Protection Program before dying of cancer in Florida in 2000.
Is omertà the same thing as “snitches get stitches”? #
The ideas overlap, since both punish talking to the police. Omertà is broader and older, though. It came out of a specific regional history, and it also forbids relying on the state at all, even to report a crime committed against you.