Black-market

adj, verb

adj, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To participate in a black market. intransitive

    "He black-marketed as a sideline."

  2. 2
    To sell in a black market. transitive

    "He made his living black-marketing goods intended only for tourists."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Traded on the black market. not-comparable
  2. 2
    Contraband, bootleg or smuggled. not-comparable
Adjective
  1. 1
    distributed or sold illicitly wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
actionableagainst the lawanarchicanarchisticblackbootleg

Antonyms

All antonyms
legal

Example

More examples

"The latest tragedy may put off some migrants from taking risky journeys in the short term. However, as long as there are no legal routes to Britain for low-skilled migrants and the market for cheap, black-market labor remains high, the demand for illegal people-smugglers will continue to grow."

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.