Joomla CMS Question:

A Mambot is a small, task-oriented function that intercepts content before it is displayed and manipulates it in some way. Joomla! provides a number of Mambots in the core distribution, e.g. WYSIWYG editors, but there are many other mambots available for specific tasks.
Some 3rd Party developer components have their own mambots which need to be installed in order to make the component work properly. In Joomla! 1.5 mambots will be renamed plugins.
Plugins: The new name for mambots. In addition, some 3rd party components, modules and mambots themselves have plugins.