Idiom
black market
Meaning
Trade that is in violation of restrictions, rationing, or price controls.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“They bought the stolen watch on the black market.”
“During the food shortage, some people turned to the black market to find basic supplies at higher prices.”
“The government struggled to regulate the economy while a thriving black market emerged to bypass the strict new trade restrictions.”
Examples
simple
“They bought the stolen watch on the black market.”
contextual
“During the food shortage, some people turned to the black market to find basic supplies at higher prices.”
complex
“The government struggled to regulate the economy while a thriving black market emerged to bypass the strict new trade restrictions.”
Origin
The phrase entered English in the early 1930s and spread during the Second World War, most likely as a translation of the German Schwarzmarkt — a 'black market' — alongside Schwärzer, a smuggler: words already used in the 1910s for illicit dealing. The 'black' carries its old association with the secret and the shady — trade done out of sight of the law.
Black markets tend to surface wherever a government bans a good or fixes its price. America's Prohibition in the 1920s bred a whole underground trade in smuggled and home-made liquor, and the wartime rationing of meat, sugar, and petrol in the 1940s pushed ordinary people toward sellers working 'off the books' — which is when the term entered everyday speech.
Key words
Related idioms
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