to traffic
- verb
- /ˈtræfɪk/
- NSFW
- And if they're trafficking your family member around, that's a real big red flag.
They were just blatantly trafficking cross country.
- They were just blatantly trafficking cross country.
- And we kind of traffic here a little bit in pettiness, Neil.
- We see how one local farmers land in Arizona is used to traffic millions in drugs.
- If you get on that plane, you'll end up probably being trafficked for sex.
- Most of what we traffic in is not what we would maybe think of as authentic love.
- So Mexico has now become like a big trafficking pub as well, right?
- If you plan to steal somebody you're helping traffic.
Examples
-
He traffics in black market technology.
-
It's not just men who traffic women, but also women who traffic women.
Blog text (8) -
I had no idea she was allegedly trying to traffic in credit card information on the rich and famous.
Blog text (1) -
Utopian dreams are attractive, in any age, to those who traffic in ideas.
Academic text (2011) -
Implicit in much of the criticism of for-profit schools is the belief that a university should traffic in ideas rather than know-how.
Academic text (2003) -
The alt right also traffics in precarious masculinity.
-
This uncomfortable accusation... ...has plunged me into at least 15 minutes of serious reflection... ...from which I have emerged with the conclusion... ...that, yes, I traffic in female stereotypes.
-
We shall know that to feed oneself is to traffic with other bodies, that desire is the itch and we will only find relief to have it flare up again, that to love is to devour.
Fiction book (2001) -
What's changed, however, is that Mary's newfound popularity threatens to transform her into little more than a commodity, rendered safe and conciliatory by those who traffic in colonial nostalgia.
Academic text (2015) -
The police arrested several individuals who were found to traffic in counterfeit goods.
Synonyms
To secretly move illegal goods from one place to another
To buy and sell goods, sometimes illegally
To buy stolen goods and sell them to other people
Antonyms
Idioms
- Slang
Tell someone angrily to do something dangerous to stop them complaining
Phrasal Verbs
Compounds
A device with red, yellow and green lights that controls cars and people at street intersections
A system of colored lights where roads meet that tells cars and people when to go
A red, yellow and green sign on a report or screen that shows a project's status
A round road junction where cars go around a central island to enter or leave
A time when cars and other vehicles move slowly and sometimes stop because of heavy traffic or an accident
- Specialized
The amount of data sent between parts of a computer over a shared connection
- Texting
Visits to a website that come from people typing the address or using a bookmark
- Specialized
A time when data takes longer to travel across a computer network, causing lag
- NSFW
The buying, selling, and moving of people to be forced to work, especially Africans taken to the Americas
How Illicit
Surface Forms
Etymology
Traffic as a verb comes from the same old idea of trade, meaning 'to do business', so to traffic in something is to buy and sell it, often secretly or illegally.