An adulterous affair could be used as blackmail if it fell into the hands of a foreign intelligence service.
Martin Kramer guesses at the Muslim Brotherhood's economic plan for Egypt: blackmail.
He was later arrested for blackmail, and spent nine months in jail in 1999-2000, but was never formally charged by the police.
VanDyke confirmed the attack on his website, writing that SEA had emailed him a blackmail threat.
In an environment lacking effective law enforcement, blackmail possibilities burgeoned: protection rackets, kidnapping, and so on.
Therefore, people do not always see that boodling is treason; that blackmail is piracy, that tax-dodging is larceny.
"But there are some things we can buy, if it has come to a matter of blackmail," raged Fogg.
St. Clare was soon suffocated by difficulties of bribery and blackmail; and needed more and more cash.
There's no blackmail about it—we're only taking back what's our own.
But doesn't it strike you that you're trying to blackmail your father?
1550s, from black (adj.) + Middle English male "rent, tribute," from Old English mal "lawsuit, terms, bargaining, agreement," from Old Norse mal "speech, agreement;" related to Old English mæðel "meeting, council," mæl "speech," Gothic maþl "meeting place," from Proto-Germanic *mathla-, from PIE *mod- "to meet, assemble" (see meet (v.)). From the practice of freebooting clan chieftains who ran protection rackets against Scottish farmers. Black from the evil of the practice. Expanded c.1826 to any type of extortion money. Cf. silver mail "rent paid in money" (1590s); buttock-mail (Scottish, 1530s) "fine imposed for fornication."
1852, from blackmail (n.). Related: Blackmailed; blackmailing.
