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bootleg

[boot-leg] / ˈbutˌlɛg /


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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The spool suit is the latest in a coordinated effort by California’s municipalities and the state attorney general’s office to throttle the bootleg gun industry by stanching the flow of its precursor components.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 10, 2026

As bootleg versions of an experimental drug from Eli Lilly flood the market, regulators are trying to curb supply.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026

This is not new: authorities in Vietnam perennially and publicly bust bootleg vendors to show that they are doing something about the country's ubiquitous shadow economies.

From BBC ● Jul. 5, 2026

Morris: If someone calls me “a bootleg Eddie Murphy,” I’m retiring.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 26, 2026

It's kind of bootleg fancy, like a knockoff Louis Vuitton bag.

From "Pride" by Ibi Zoboi

If you didn’t tape a copy off of your local FM station, it wasn’t hard to find somebody that did, and it became one of the first commercial R.E.M. bootlegs.

From Salon ● Oct. 7, 2026

Patrick Mahomes is coming off knee surgery, and Andy Reid will need to scheme around what he can’t do yet, mainly moving out of the pocket on bootlegs.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 9, 2026

His strengths are his mobility, being able to throw on the run, and finding different arm angles to make the pass when he rolls out of the pocket, the bootlegs.

From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2025

After its initial theatrical run, Lindsay-Hogg’s film largely disappeared for more than a half-century with the exception of low-quality VHS versions and bootlegs.

From New York Times ● Apr. 16, 2024

The splintered shards were piled high against his brake: he had not paused to clear them out of his way except around his bootlegs.

From The Reign of Law; a tale of the Kentucky hemp fields by James Lane Allen

But a growing number of fans say a crackdown on bootlegged merchandise is hampering that spirit.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 11, 2026

Hildebrandt said that a decade ago, dental students in her classes “were basically giving each other thumb drives with bootlegged copies of the head and neck.”

From Los Angeles Times ● May 20, 2024

In the salons I went to as a child, I remember men peddling bootlegged movies and fashions to the clients with their hair wrapped or freshly sheened as they dug for cash in their purses.

From New York Times ● Nov. 13, 2023

Atlanta’s young quarterback, Desmond Ridder, bootlegged for a 6-yard touchdown on fourth-and-4 with just under 12 minutes remaining.

From Washington Times ● Sep. 17, 2023

I wish I could stop one of them and give them sage advice about the future and bootlegged exams.

From "Saints and Misfits" by S.K. Ali

With four simple words, a sport that was born out of bootlegging, good ole boys and fast cars graduated from a regional sideshow to a national spectacle.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 17, 2023

“We’re in an impossible situation that’s reminiscent of the Prohibition era, where the federal government prohibited alcoholic beverages, bootlegging was rampant, and that’s exactly what’s happening in the District today,” Mendelson said.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 17, 2022

The Premier League has previously pursued legal action against Saudi links to the bootlegging of its match broadcasts, whose rights are owned by Qatar’s beIN Sports.

From Seattle Times ● Jun. 30, 2020

This week, more than a century later, officials in Clark County, Idaho, announced that Joseph Henry Loveless, the bootlegging escape artist, had been found.

From New York Times ● Jan. 3, 2020

Foreign bootlegging of minerals is so thorough that our neighbor the French Congo, without a single diamond mine in its borders, is the world’s fifth-largest exporter of diamonds.

From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver




Vocabulary lists containing bootleg


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