CONTRABAND • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Contraband

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/kˈɑntrəbˌænd/ Listen

noun

Contraband n.

Illegal or prohibited traffic. "Persons the most bound in duty to prevent contraband, and the most interested in the seizures."

Goods or merchandise the importation or exportation of which is forbidden.

A negro slave, during the Civil War, escaped to, or was brought within, the Union lines. Such slave was considered contraband of war. (U.S.)

Contraband of war, that which, according to international law, cannot be supplied to a hostile belligerent except at the risk of seizure and condemnation by the aggrieved belligerent.

adjective

Contraband adj. Prohibited or excluded by law or treaty; forbidden; as, contraband goods, or trade. "The contraband will always keep pace, in some measure, with the fair trade."

verb

Contraband v. t.

To import illegally, as prohibited goods; to smuggle. (Obs.)

To declare prohibited; to forbid. (Obs.) "The law severly contrabands Our taking business of men's hands."

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Etymology of 'Contraband'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Contraband" Quotes from Famous Books

... used up all his allowable words, and was falling back on the contraband kind to express ...

— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton

... condone, but it does not lie upon you to force them to identify themselves with your act and situation. But better too much openness than too little. Squalid intrigue was the shadow of the old intolerably narrow order; it is a shadow we want to illuminate out of existence. Secrets will be contraband in the ...

— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing ...

— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... sailed for France in the "Jonas," hoping on his way to seize certain contraband fur-traders, reported to be at Canseau and Cape Breton. Poutrincourt and Champlain, bent on finding a better site for their settlement in a more southern latitude, set out on a voyage of discovery, in an ill-built vessel of eighteen tons, while Lescarbot ...

— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... John Nicholas, who tells me that Mr. Coventry is come from Bredah, as was expected; but, contrary to expectation, brings with him two or three articles which do not please the King: as, to retrench the Act of Navigation, and then to ascertain what are contraband goods; and then that those exiled persons, who are or shall take refuge in their country, may be secure from any further prosecution. Whether these will be enough to break the peace upon, or no, he cannot tell; but I perceive the certainty of peace is blown over. So ...

— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

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