BLACKMAIL • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Blackmail

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/blˈækmˌeɪl/ Listen

noun

Blackmail n.

A certain rate of money, corn, cattle, or other thing, anciently paid, in the north of England and south of Scotland, to certain men who were allied to robbers, or moss troopers, to be by them protected from pillage.

Payment of money exacted by means of intimidation; also, extortion of money from a person by threats of public accusation, exposure, or censure.

(Eng. Law) Black rent, or rent paid in corn, flesh, or the lowest coin, a opposed to "white rent", which paid in silver.

To levy blackmail, to extort money by threats, as of injury to one's reputation.

verb

Blackmail v. t. (past & past part. blackmailed; pres. part. blackmailing) To extort money from by exciting fears of injury other than bodily harm, as injury to reputation, distress of mind, etc.; as, to blackmail a merchant by threatening to expose an alleged fraud. (U. S.)

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Etymology of 'Blackmail'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Blackmail" Quotes from Famous Books

... concocted in emergency, as he asserted in his confession at London, or whether it was a carefully constructed lie taught him by his father in order to revenge himself upon some hated neighbors, and perhaps to exact blackmail, as some of the accused later charged, we shall never know. In later life the boy is said to have admitted that he had been set on by his father,[8] but the narrative possesses certain earmarks of a story struck out by a child's ...

— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... to keep doves themselves, and when the swarms from my lord's dovecote settled on their crops they must not lose their temper and kill a bird, for awful would the penalty be; when the harvest was at last gathered, then came the procession of robbers to levy their blackmail upon it: first the Church carted off its fat tenth, then the king's commissioner took his twentieth, then my lord's people made a mighty inroad upon the remainder; after which, the skinned freeman had liberty to bestow the remnant ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... tyrant of the Press cannot complain if words are ascribed to them which they never uttered, if they are held guilty of deeds from which they would shrink in horror. Law and custom are alike powerless to fight this tyranny, which is the most ingenious and irksome form of blackmail yet invented. ...

— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... trust funds which the complainant recognized were legally in the hands of Aguinaldo. It could be carried on only with great difficulty without his presence and without his account books. Meetings were held, and Artacho was denounced as attempting to extort blackmail, but he refused to yield, and Aguinaldo, rather than explain the inner workings of the Hongkong junta before a British court, prepared for flight. A summons was issued for his appearance before the supreme court of Hongkong on April 13, 1898, ...

— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... he and Satan could find it, and the longest liver should take all'; how, out of some such tradition, Edgar Poe built up the wonderful tale of the Gold Bug; how the planters of certain Southern States, and even the Governor of North Carolina, paid him blackmail, and received blackmail from him likewise; and lastly, how he met a man as brave as he, but with a clear conscience and a clear sense of duty, in the person of Mr. Robert Maynard, first lieutenant of the Pearl, who found him after endless difficulties, and ...

— At Last • Charles Kingsley

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