Search the Dictionary

wild fowl, for game or food, as by shooting, or by decoys, nets, etc. Such persons as may lawfully hunt, fish, or fowl. Blackstone. Fowling piece, a light gun with smooth bore, adapted for the use of small shot in killing birds or small quadrupeds.

Deception deliberately practiced with a view to gaining an unlawful or unfair advantage; artifice by which the right or interest of another is injured; injurious stratagem; deceit; trick. If success a lover's toil attends, Few ask, if fraud or force attained his ends. Pope.

An honorary payment, usually in recognition of services for which it is not usual or not lawful to assign a fixed business price. Heumann.

cording to, or authorized by, law; specif., contrary to, or in violation of, human law; unlawful; illicit; hence, immoral; as, an illegal act; illegal trade; illegal love. Bp. Burnet.

The quality or condition of being illegal; unlawfulness; as, the illegality of trespass or of false imprisonment; also, an illegal act.

To make or declare illegal or unlawful.

In a illegal manner; unlawfully.

Illegality, unlawfulness.

Not according to law; not regular or authorized; unlawful; improper.

In a illegitimate manner; unlawfully.

Not permitted or allowed; prohibited; unlawful; as, illicit trade; illicit intercourse; illicit pleasure. One illicit . . . transaction always leads to another. Burke. -- Il*lic"it*ly, adv. -- Il*lic"it*ness, n.

An excessive, arbitrary, or unlawful exaction; hence, a trick or deception put on laid on others; cheating; fraud; delusion; imposture. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition. Shak.

nd American law are in the nature of actions in personam against a person alleged to be unlawfully withholding the property.

temper; obstinacy. Self-conceit produces peevishness and incompliance of humor in things lawful and indifferent. Tillotson.

not restraining the passions or appetites, particularly the sexual appetite; indulging unlawful lust; unchaste; lewd.

as, the inconvenience of the arrangement. They plead against the inconvenience, not the unlawfulness, . . . of ceremonies in burial. Hooker.

itually occupied; busy; assiduous; not slothful or idle; -- commonly implying devotion to lawful and useful labor. Frugal and industrious men are commonly friendly to the established government. Sir W. Temple.

d place; as, what is expedient at one time may be inexpedient at another. If it was not unlawful, yet it was highly inexpedient to use those ceremonies. Bp. Burnet.

red, The high injunction,not to taste that fruit. Milton. Necessary as the injunctions of lawful authority. South.

Lawful; permitted; as, an innocent trade.