The word 'cabal' is correct and usable in written English.
It is used to refer to a group of people conspiring in secret to achieve their own aims, usually in a political context. For example, "The President accused his opponents of forming a cabal to oust him from office."
Where Yellen falls short, however, is in her connections to any particular cabal.
Replacing her with Pym would embarrassingly make the crack cabal all-male, which increases the likelihood that tyro news and current affairs boss James Harding – who was at the FT and then business editor of the Times, before becoming the latter's editor – will look to the broadsheets (or possibly other broadcasters) in the hope of finding a woman.
Tarantola, who until last year was deputy director general of the Bank of Italy, was declared one of a cabal of "fanatical feminists" and compared to Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's ousted president, for her supposedly moralising tendencies.
Are the Hugo awards in thrall to a politically correct cabal, or simply making an effort to remedy an ingrained injustice?
A strong – for a long time successful but ultimately corrosive – cabal held sway in the England dressing room while Clarke remained the dominant force in the boardroom.
The cabal that forced out Margaret Thatcher shared an enthusiasm for Europe and a fear of the poll tax.
Their market share is still tiny, but Ron Readmond, a founder of one of the biggest, Wit Capital, says that they are causing the beginnings of a panic among the "cabal" of banks that dominate the IPO business, which realise that the newcomers are threatening their business.
They see a kleptocratic state, teetering on the edge of anarchy and serving only a ruling cabal of politicians, bureaucrats and the military men who operate in the shadows.
The Senate bill allows insurers to do this, but forces patients receiving subsidies to write separate cheques for abortion cover.The usual way bills are reconciled in Congress is by cabal.
Any explicit cabal of that kind looks highly unlikely, given India's taste for non-alignment, and Iran's status as a terrorist-state in the eyes of the West.
Britain's Europhobic Daily Telegraph said the draft was "a coup d'etat by a clique of a coterie of a cabal" of arch-federalists.
