Glossary entry
Goomah
GOO-mah
Definition
GOO-mah
A mistress kept openly and semi-permanently, as distinct from a passing affair. From the Italian comare, a godmother or close family friend.
“The apartment was in his sister's name and the goomah had lived in it for nine years.”
The word is a Neapolitan-inflected corruption of comare, which properly means a godmother or a woman standing in a formal relationship to a family. The transposition to a mistress is old, and the euphemism is doing real work: it places the arrangement inside the language of family rather than outside it.
The arrangement was tolerated and quietly expected at senior levels, with two rules attached. It was not to become public in a way that embarrassed the wife, and it was never to involve the wife or daughter of another member.
It also created a documented weakness. A second household means a second address, a second set of bills and a second person who knows the schedule — and surveillance files across several decades show investigators finding the mistress considerably easier to approach than anyone on the payroll.