black market
85
3.9
- noun
- /blæk ˈmɑrkɪt/
- NSFW
:
mercado negro
- During the war, a thriving black market emerged for food and supplies that were scarce.
- foreign exchange black market
- black market rate
- foreign currency black market
And that's going to unlock this and monetize this whole online black market.
- And that's going to unlock this and monetize this whole online black market.
- And a whole lot of this ends up on the black market.
- And she said all of a sudden she couldn't get the pills on the black market from her dealer.
- And as happens when you ban something that becomes the, that creates a black market often.
- A handful of the jobs we're going to cover are either grey market or black market gigs.
- And so it became a lot of essentially a kind of black market economy through which these generals became rich.
- We hear that you were making stuff on the black market.
- Now there was a great and and robust black market and printed materials, but like people went to prison for that stuff.
- We know that prohibition created black market fentanyl, which is killing Americans and fueling violent cartels.
- But the black market is where a guy will steal a watch and sell it to another guy who knows it's stolen, right?
- So Silk Road was the biggest black market illegal drugs empire.
- So get this because the pieces are so famous, there's no way that they could sell those on the black market.
- And apparently the, there's a huge like black market for people trying to buy the fragments and a ton of them are fake.
Examples
-
There's probably a really good black market for it if you know where to go.
Fiction book (1998) -
If you look at who controls that stuff on the black market... ...it's the Russian Mafia.
-
When you hear that sound, that means the black market just opened.
-
That black market could get us all into trouble.
-
The demand for the newspaper was so high that it was also sold in the black market.
Academic text (2017) -
But the black market is where a guy will steal a watch and sell it to another guy who knows it's stolen, right?
-
Are you still trading stolen cars on the black market?
-
Zev found it on the black market, a whole case.
Fiction book (1996) -
Notice that the black market is centered in Lima, Peru's capital and largest city.
Academic text (1991) -
The fourth section examines the determination of the exchange rate in Peru's black market during the past two decades.
Academic text (1991)
Synonyms
1
5.6
A hidden network where people buy and sell things illegally
How Illegal
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is partly compositional: 'market' (place of trade) combined with a figurative use of 'black' (marking illicit/hidden activity) yields 'illegal trade'. Many languages use the same pattern (e.g., Spanish 'mercado negro'), so the logic is accessible, but the meaning relies on a metaphorical extension of 'black' rather than a strictly literal combination and may not be immediately obvious to a B1 learner who only knows 'black' as a colour.
Etymology
Black market may come from the image of sellers working in the dark. The word black suggested something hidden or secret and market is a place to sell, so the phrase now means 'an illegal market'.