toggle menu
menu
vocabulary
1000+ books

illicit
in a sentence

show 116 more with this conextual meaning
  • His fingers, at her waist, seemed to have become abnormally and dangerously sensitive, and he prayed that his face did not show the enormous, illicit pleasure which entered him through his fingertips.   (source)
  • Over the years Puller had seen just about every type of illicit drug there was.   (source)
    illicit = illegal
  • This had happened the previous Saturday night near Lake Chatulla, in an area of a state park where illicit behavior was known to be common.   (source)
    illicit = illegal or improper
  • The verb Inspector Supervisor Skaaiat used implied that it hadn't been an approved, Medical-mediated suicide but something illicit and messy.   (source)
    illicit = illegal
  • Lately, he'd been keeping an eye on ISIS's involvement in the illicit antiquities trade, which is why he requested a crash meeting the day after the bomb exploded in Paris.   (source)
  • There was bribery, favoritism, and racketeering of every kind, there was homosexuality and prostitution, there was even illicit alcohol distilled from potatoes.   (source)
  • Unorthodox cooking, illicit cooking.   (source)
    illicit = improper
  • Potion ingredients have gone missing from my private store cupboard … students attempting illicit mixtures, no doubt….†   (source)
  • I saw it as a kind of illicit reward for years of chores and courtesy.†   (source)
  • As it is, this illicit reading of mine seems a kind of performance.†   (source)
  • The nice thing about the constant threat of expulsion at Culver Creek is that it lends excitement to every moment of illicit pleasure.†   (source)
  • The waiter's comment has discomfited him, making his attraction to Moushumi feel mildly illicit.†   (source)
  • He got them both Cokes and looked at the couch to see if it looked illicit.†   (source)
  • Please note, I am not suggesting that illicit drugs are required to break down social barriers.†   (source)
  • There was relief all around, but soon the thread had been overtaken by a multi-participant debate about the efficacy of that war, U.S. foreign policy in general, whether or not we won in Vietnam or Grenada or even WWI, and the ability of the Afghans to self-govern, and the opium trade financing the insurgents, and the possibility of legalization of any and all illicit drugs in America and Europe.†   (source)
  • But in the end she would do it, just as wild dogs begin to bury their illicit kills after they have been hunted awhile.†   (source)
  • Like a powerful internal-affairs office, the OS monitored all CIA employees for illicit behavior: misappropriation of funds, selling of secrets, stealing classified technologies, and use of illegal torture tactics, to name a few.†   (source)
  • Five A.M., that's the best time, when the clicking of your heels on the sidewalk sounds illicit.†   (source)
  • In any event, it was difficult for him to comprehend that two free adults without a past and living on the fringes of a closed society's prejudices had chosen the hazards of illicit love.†   (source)
  • Suddenly, sex seemed so . so …. illicit.†   (source)
  • Further, in addition to its "back fence" connotation, its suggestion of illicit gossip, of thrilling revelation, there is also, in the "whisper," the assumption (on the part of the reader) that the teller is on the inside, knows something others do not, and is going to be generous with this privileged information.†   (source)
  • But they did want to know if he had ever offered me any kind of illicit materials.†   (source)
  • Around Cange, Farmer noted, the peasants' vocabulary didn't even contain a word for illicit drugs, which virtually no one there could afford anyway.†   (source)
  • Illicit fun settled upon, I put on my most innocent face and went to gift my family with half-hearted company.†   (source)
  • "Many African immigrants are engaging in illicit activities such as drug dealing," the story read.†   (source)
  • This emphasis on illicit cash proved to be a winning effort, for nothing infuriated the law-abiding populace more than the image of the millionaire crack dealer.†   (source)
  • I was entranced by the illicit adventure Nora represented.†   (source)
  • Because the Mastoi had accused Shakur of illicit sex, the village tribal assembly, dominated by the Mastoi, held a meeting.†   (source)
  • They searched his van, found marijuana, and charged him with possession of an illicit substance.†   (source)
  • Gwen always had good stories, many of which concerned the illicit predilections of the town's citizens.†   (source)
  • Two sets of books is a tried and true and very traditional method of hiding illicit income.†   (source)
  • Part of me had supposed that she only chose to seek because she illicitly craved the violence.†   (source)
  • And how shall we pay for these illicit goods—assuming she can acquire them on our behalf?†   (source)
  • He wants everybody to know the FBI will never be diminished—and that there's nothing illicit going on in America that he doesn't know about.†   (source)
  • I remember a corporal who in his radio code book kept illicit slides of disrobed maidens, a sheaf of which he had salvaged from a bombed-out colonial mansion in Indonesia.†   (source)
  • Illicit Trade Between States Easy†   (source)
  • Problem with illicit phone is how to receive incoming calls.†   (source)
  • The only obstacle in the way of this union is that Francesca is Pasquale's mother—her illicit liaison with the good ex-Duke of Faggio being one reason Angelo had him poisoned to begin with.†   (source)
  • The Reverend Entwistle, drugged with Budweiser and in bed with a woman not his wife, was basically ill-at-ease in this illicit ambience, even while asleep.†   (source)
  • And there were three broad categories: those who were ignorant, those who disapproved, and those who would be hampered in an illicit life-style.†   (source)
  • The few words he overheard were enough to tell him that it concerned some secret and illicit plan.†   (source)
  • Others were not; and the astonished gate guards, checking and inspecting for illicit baggage, saw one lunatic in full diplomatic regalia march through with a pack on his back.†   (source)
  • For this to succeed, Tita must agree to give up having an illicit child.   (source)
    illicit = contrary to law or accepted morality
  • With no fanfare save for the wind in the mute trees and the beating of their illicit hearts, they jumped, succumbed to the extended downward tug of the portal, the upward velocity, and sprang from a puddle inside the Houses of Parliament.   (source)
    illicit = immoral
  • With the aid of the Count's handkerchief, she gingerly opened a small cast-iron door in the furnace to reveal the fire that burned day and night, and which happened to be the best place in the hotel to destroy secret messages and illicit love letters.   (source)
    illicit = improper
  • Or didn't you have an illicit child?   (source)
    illicit = contrary to law or accepted morality
  • Another bottle of illicit alcohol.   (source)
    illicit = illegal
  • The need seemed, indeed, to be precisely this passivity, this gift of illicit pleasure, this adoration.   (source)
    illicit = improper
  • He was David Rostov, an itinerant businessman of Russian-Canadian descent who acquired illicit antiquities in the Middle East for a largely European clientele.   (source)
    illicit = illegal
  • Something a little illicit, not entirely harmless but undeniably thrilling.†   (source)
  • It didn't matter how much food he devoured, either through legitimate means or illicit activities.†   (source)
  • And invariably, quite apart from the text, there would be the preambles, and the illicit exchanges.†   (source)
  • He's an adrenaline junkie, and his psyche requires illicit excitement.†   (source)
  • If you had illicit income, why would you be stupid enough to document it?†   (source)
  • If the States separated, duties would have to be low to avoid the temptations of illicit trade.†   (source)
  • One side says it is a criminal toleration of an illicit practice.†   (source)
  • People must be employed to guard the inland borders against illicit trade.†   (source)
  • Preventing illicit trade over an inland border is very difficult.†   (source)
  • Illicit microfilms of the illustrations in that Vatican edition.†   (source)
  • We thought … it was because Pecola was having her father's baby that the marigolds did not grow" foregrounds the flowers, backgrounds illicit, traumatic, incomprehensible sex coming to its dreaded fruition.†   (source)
  • I have absolutely no intention of being part of this illicit piscine economy, but "I" am fairly interested.†   (source)
  • He had no idea if what he had seen was licit or illicit, and by the time he had walked another two or three blocks, he no longer cared.†   (source)
  • There was just something exciting about maintaining the pretense that nothing had changed between them; it gave the relationship an illicit feeling, almost like an affair.†   (source)
  • The Maryland countryside, with its smugglers and spies and illicit operatives, is the last place John Fletcher wants to spend the night.†   (source)
  • Yet something about him excited her and now, lying drowsily in this illicit bed (but with an awakening sense of excitement and pleasurable fear), she thought it might have been his car-at least at the start.†   (source)
  • Plus, after my screwdriver misadventure, I didn't have the stomach for illicit activities, even assignations, no matter how much I lusted for Larry.†   (source)
  • T.'s foot soldiers also held minimum-wage jobs in the legitimate sector to supplement their skimpy illicit earnings.†   (source)
  • "Thank you, Lieutenant," she said, bowing her head, just as she might in everyday, civilian life, and I felt suddenly illicit in her presence, as though we'd slipped out of sight of our chaperons and found ourselves in a darkened, private park somewhere.†   (source)
  • A third of them, however, were typically imprisoned at any time, a significant downside of an up position in an illicit industry.†   (source)
  • It was hard to see how a person could conduct an intimate relationship in such an intensely overcrowded environment, let alone an illicit relationship.†   (source)
  • Sometimes when my coworkers in electric were squabbling, or watching illicit trash television when DeSimon wasn't around, I would just flee to the bathroom for a few blessed minutes of privacy and quiet.†   (source)
  • At night, after ten P.M. lights out, the halls were quiet, haunted by the occasional woman in her muu-muu heading to the bathroom or the mail drop box, navigating by the distant light from a common room where someone was sitting, perhaps illicitly watching after-hours TV.†   (source)
  • The closeness of the States, the intersecting rivers, the bays, the ease of communication in every direction, the same language and manners, and similar commercial habits make illicit trade easy.†   (source)
  • "I suppose I'm here without official sanction, and engaged in a bit of illicit research," I said "but if Eric doesn't like it when you tell him that you saw me, please explain that I was simply exercising my rights, and he will be seeing me personally-soon."†   (source)
  • Or are the charms of wedlock with old Frank Kennedy more alluring than illicit relations with me?†   (source)
  • He understood; he exulted in its evil—which was the evil of earth, of illicit nature.†   (source)
  • Duncan Trice led Cass to the bottle, the gaming table and the racecourse, but not to the "illicit sweetness of the flesh."†   (source)
  • I went from door to door with the precinct captain and discovered that the whole business was one long process of bribery, that people voted for three dollars, for the right to continue their illicit trade in sex or alcohol.†   (source)
  • Many of these rooms were the hide-outs for thieves and robbers, and there was much prostitution and brewing of illicit liquor.†   (source)
  • If then, these suppressions and needs are combined, it seems possible that the reason for this brutality to Vanessa was that he had an illicit need forsympathy, released by the woman, stimulated; and her refusal to accept her role, part slave, part angel, exacerbated him; checked the flow that had become necessary of self pity, and stirred in him instincts of which he was unconscious.†   (source)
  • Well, Stella is in du Niveau's film company, and I am in illicit dealing--to discriminate against myself, more than half the business of Europe being the same.†   (source)
  • In the fresh pre-natal morning they began their route, walking down the steep hill of Valley Street into tropical sleep, past the stabled torpor of black sleepers, past all the illicit loves, the casual and innumerable adulteries of Niggertown.†   (source)
  • But I think that it was done by him unawares, his partiality for her was so great") No, the other young men, members of the Trice circle, led Cass first to the "illicit sweetness."†   (source)
  • Is the sonnet less of a good—if it is good, which I doubt—because the dame he got the ants over happened to be married to somebody else, so that his passion, as they say, was illicit?†   (source)
  • I discovered that there is an education for vice as well as for virtue, and I learned what was to be learned from the gaming table, the bottle, and the racecourse and from the illicit sweetness of the flesh.†   (source)
  • She and the Pattons and the fellow who was stuck on her, and God knew who else, were going to pile into the car and drive forty miles to La Grange, a joint in the next county, on the road to the city, where there were a few dice tables and a couple of roulette wheels and where the best people rubbed shoulders with the worst and inhaled a communal blue fog of throat-lacerating tobacco smoke and illicit alcohol fumes.†   (source)
  • Besides that—way I figure it, this illicit love-making is the one game that you always lose at.†   (source)
  • Her mute examination of him made him feel illicit.†   (source)
  • About their arrival there was something timorous and illicit.†   (source)
  • …though we have plenty of dramas with heroes and heroines who are in love and must accordingly marry or perish at the end of the play, or about people whose relations with one another have been complicated by the marriage laws, not to mention the looser sort of plays which trade on the tradition that illicit love affairs are at once vicious and delightful, we have no modern English plays in which the natural attraction of the sexes for one another is made the mainspring of the action.†   (source)
  • He pictured the rooms where these people lived—where the patterns of the blistered wall-papers were heavy reiterated sunflowers on green and yellow backgrounds, where there were tin bathtubs and gloomy hallways and verdureless, unnamable spaces in back of the buildings; where even love dressed as seduction—a sordid murder around the corner, illicit motherhood in the flat above.†   (source)
  • One may be the victim of an internal conflict between two illicit moods, yet nevertheless, as the law and the church see it, guilty of sin and crime.†   (source)
  • Was it illicit to think that certain planets of the atomic solar system— among all those hosts of solar systems in all those milky ways that constituted matter—that the state of some planet or other in that inner world might not correspond to the conditions that made the earth an abode of life?†   (source)
  • "Is an illicit affair like a gambling debt—demands stricter honor than the legitimate debt of matrimony, because it's not legally enforced?†   (source)
  • Had you two—yourself and Miss Alden, I mean—at that time when you first met Miss X already established that illicit relationship referred to?†   (source)
  • For a slightly tipsy young master of the muffling art with an "abnormal" skin condition, who was no longer totally lacking in experience when it came to illicit matters, this was a speculation that bore the stamp of logic and truth and, far from being absurd, seemed as perfectly obvious as it was illuminating.†   (source)
  • In one, as he saw at a glance, stood a stout, sober, smooth-shaven man of fifty whose bespectacled eyes and iron gray hair seemed to indicate to Clyde's mind that he would be most certain to deny such a youthful applicant as himself—refuse to believe that he was married—or to admit that he had any such remedy, and suspect him of illicit relations with some young, unmarried girl into the bargain.†   (source)
  • The only reason he had pocketed a bottle of this amateurish drink was that it was available for purchase in little flasks at the Berghof, intended for guests going on excursions, but certainly never for anyone illicitly wandering off and getting lost in the snow and frost of the mountains and then waiting for night to fall.†   (source)
  • …boys with whom he was associated, one or more of whom was constantly seated with him upon the "hop-bench," as they called it, as to the evidence and presence even here—it was not long before various examples of the phenomena were pointed out to him—of a certain type of social pervert, morally disarranged and socially taboo, who sought to arrest and interest boys of their type, in order to come into some form of illicit relationship with them, which at first Clyde could not grasp.†   (source)
  • She espied some adventure of the heart, more or less illicit, a woman in the shadow, a rendezvous, a mystery, and she would not have been sorry to thrust her spectacles into the affair.†   (source)
  • As is indeed not unfrequent with women of unimpeachable virtue, weary of the monotony of respectable existence, at a distance she not only excused illicit love, she positively envied it.†   (source)
  • In this state of doubt men abstain from them altogether, and a sort of public opinion passes current which tends to cause any association whatsoever to be regarded as a bold and almost an illicit enterprise.†   (source)
  • It seemed an illicit way of arriving at information, and even had a vague analogy with listening at a key-hole.†   (source)
  • I happened to meet with an old man, in the South of the Union, who had lived in illicit intercourse with one of his negresses, and had had several children by her, who were born the slaves of their father.†   (source)
  • Nothing better serves to justify an illicit passion, either to the minds of those who have conceived it or to the world which looks on, than compulsory or accidental marriages.†   (source)
  • That made it sound like I was sneaking around having illicit sexual liaisons with voluptuous Italian women.   (source)
    illicit = improper
  • He says this, a censor of morals, a very pelican in his piety, who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of nature, to attempt illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn from the lowest strata of society!†   (source)
  • It represents a partially nude señorita, frail and lovely (his wife, as he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard.†   (source)
  • …the legitimate husband happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter from the usual boy Jones, who happened to come across them at the crucial moment in a loving position locked in one another's arms, drawing attention to their illicit proceedings and leading up to a domestic rumpus and the erring fair one begging forgiveness of her lord and master upon her knees and promising to sever the connection and not receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would…†   (source)
  • *illicit lover Woe was this wretched woman then begone; Her child cri'd, and she cried piteously: But blissful Mary help'd her right anon, For, with her struggling well and mightily, The thief fell overboard all suddenly, And in the sea he drenched* for vengeance, *drowned And thus hath Christ unwemmed* kept Constance.†   (source)
  • Attempts have been made to pervert this clause into an objection against the Constitution, by representing it on one side as a criminal toleration of an illicit practice, and on another as calculated to prevent voluntary and beneficial emigrations from Europe to America.†   (source)
  • As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.†   (source)
  • Why may not illicit combinations, for purposes of violence, be formed as well by a majority of a State, especially a small State as by a majority of a county, or a district of the same State; and if the authority of the State ought, in the latter case, to protect the local magistracy, ought not the federal authority, in the former, to support the State authority?†   (source)
  • If, in addition to the consideration of a plurality of civil lists, we take into view the number of persons who must necessarily be employed to guard the inland communication between the different confederacies against illicit trade, and who in time will infallibly spring up out of the necessities of revenue; and if we also take into view the military establishments which it has been shown would unavoidably result from the jealousies and conflicts of the several nations into which the…†   (source)
  • Each house is, as it necessarily must be, the judge of the elections, qualifications, and returns of its members; and whatever improvements may be suggested by experience, for simplifying and accelerating the process in disputed cases, so great a portion of a year would unavoidably elapse, before an illegitimate member could be dispossessed of his seat, that the prospect of such an event would be little check to unfair and illicit means of obtaining a seat.†   (source)
  • The relative situation of these States; the number of rivers with which they are intersected, and of bays that wash there shores; the facility of communication in every direction; the affinity of language and manners; the familiar habits of intercourse; --all these are circumstances that would conspire to render an illicit trade between them a matter of little difficulty, and would insure frequent evasions of the commercial regulations of each other.†   (source)
▲ show less (of above)