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Glite Dictionary
🍾 Illegal alcohol trade 💿 Illegal goods trade
bootlegging

bootlegging

1 7.8
Making or selling goods without the owner's permission
  • noun
  • /ˈbuːtˌlɛɡɪŋ/
translation icon : contrabando
  • Since she couldn't get a job in the 1920s during Canadian Prohibition, she became self-employed, taking up rum-running, bootlegging, and being a bookie for the rest of her life.
  • bootlegging operation

Examples

  • The government is cracking down on bootlegging operations that sell untaxed alcohol to consumers.

  • Now as far as bootlegging goes, well, I happen to work for a very important man back east.

    Life (1999)

  • Good money in bootlegging, if you know what you're doing.

    Legends of the Fall (1994)

  • Bootlegging laws help explain why craft spirits have been slow to arrive.

    Blog text (23)

  • Between 1918 and 1923, Carrillo Puerto and the popular Socialist movement checked local bosses and their bootlegging operations but could never root them out.

    Academic text (2002)

  • My dad met the Texas Ranger, a man named Joe Jackson, who had been dispatched from Austin to break the back of the bootlegging operations in Concho and Tom Green counties.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • Pinkett ran editorials calling for the cleaning up of the bootlegging and gambling joints that were rapidly multiplying in the northern section of Omaha, where many of our race reside.

    Academic text (1994)

  • When Capone arrived in Miami Beach, historians say, the mob boss wasn't looking to expand his empire of bootlegging, gambling, and money laundering but was searching for a place to retreat from the stresses of running the mob.

    Blog text (24)

  • Many small businesses struggle due to the rising issue of bootlegging, which undermines legitimate sales.

  • Local law enforcement seized a large shipment of goods suspected to be the result of bootlegging activities.

Synonyms

smuggling
vsbootlegging
  • NSFW
81 4.5

To bring banned goods into or out of a country without paying taxes

focuses on making or selling goods illegally rather than secret border transport
piracy
vsbootlegging
45 4.9

Using or copying someone's work without permission

involves producing and selling physical goods illegally rather than copying ideas

How Illegal

counterfeit
80 6.7
trafficking
  • NSFW
183 5.6
bootlegging
1 7.8
gray market
  • US
1 6.3

Surface Forms

bootlegging singular
bootleggings plural

Morphology

bootlegging = bootleg (semi-transparent) = bootleg + ing

The noun is formed by adding the productive suffix '-ing' to the verb 'bootleg', creating the action or practice.

Etymology

Bootlegging also means making or selling goods 'without permission', like fake DVDs or secret music recordings, because sellers used the same idea of hiding and moving things secretly.