black-market
[blak-mahr-kit]
- to black-marketeer.
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- to sell (something) in the black market.
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Origin of black-market
First recorded in 1930–35; v. use of black market
black market
- the illicit buying and selling of goods in violation of legal price controls, rationing, etc.
- a place where such activity is carried on.
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Origin of black market
First recorded in 1930–35
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for black-market
Contemporary Examples
On the street level, black-market banks in China never advertise their enterprise.
The black-market channels which ferry ivory from poachers are often the same used for illegal arms, drugs, and trafficked labor.
Would he mind, she wondered, carrying the package of black-market tea that she was bringing her mother?
On the black-market, Iranian moneylenders peg the real exchange rate far higher, at more than 35,000 rials per dollar.
Siddiqui is suspected of dealing with $19 million worth of black-market diamonds to pay for al Qaeda attacks.
black market
- any system in which goods or currencies are sold and bought illegally, esp in violation of controls or rationing
- (as modifier)black market lamb
- the place where such a system operates
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- to sell (goods) on the black market
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for black-market
black market
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
black market
The illegal buying and selling of goods above the price fixed by a government. Black markets usually develop when, because of war, disaster, or public policy, a government tries to set prices for commodities instead of allowing the normal operations of supply and demand to set prices.
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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.