Etymologically
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illicit

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Pronunciation

  • /ɪˈlɪsɪt/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French illicite (“unlawful, forbidden”),[2][3][4][5] itself a learned borrowing[4] from Latin illicitus (“not allowed, unlawful”);[2][3][5] some dictionaries allow a direct borrowing from Latin as well.[6][7] The French word is recorded from the 14th century.[2][3] The Latin adjective is formed from in- (“not”), in its assimilated form il-, and licitus (“allowed, lawful”),[8][4][3] the past participle of liceō (“to be allowed”).[2][3][9] It is the negative of licit, and related to licence and leisure.[8][3][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Not allowed; unlawful: Merriam-Webster dates the first known use to 1506,[11] and Barnhart has "before 1506".[12] The OED's first quotation is from 1606, in J. Hind's Eliosto Libidinoso,[2] and Barnhart's full dictionary gives "before 1652", the date of the 1989 OED.[4][13]

Semantic evolution

The word has kept its first sense, "not permitted", throughout;[2][3] Johnson (1755) defined it simply as "unlawful", and in 1773 added the example "an illicite trade".[14] Later uses narrowed it: from 1827 logicians spoke of an illicit process, a syllogism in which a term not distributed in the premisses is distributed in the conclusion,[2][6] and since 1884 the word has also described a person who does something illegal.[2] According to the Random House synonym study, illicit now applies most often to things regulated by law, with emphasis on the way they are done, as in an illicit attempt to control a market.[15]

Timeline

  • 1506 – first known use, not permitted, unlawful.[11]
  • 1606 – the OED's first quotation, in J. Hind's Eliosto Libidinoso.[2][16]
  • 1755 – Johnson defines it as "unlawful".[14]
  • 1827 – illicit process, in logic, in Whately's Elements of Logic.[2]
  • 1884 – of a person, doing something illegal.[2]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. Not allowed by law; illegal or unlawful: the illicit sale of firearms.[17][11][2]
  2. Not approved by custom, rule or accepted standards: an illicit love affair.[17][2]
  3. (logic) illicit process: a fallacy in a syllogism, in which a term not distributed in the premisses is distributed in the conclusion.[2][6]

Word family

  • illicitly
  • illicitness

Usage notes

In the Random House synonym study, illegal refers chiefly to breaches of statutes or of the codified rules of a sport, unlawful to what the law does not sanction, illegitimate to what lacks legal or traditional right, and illicit, which first meant only "not permitted", to regulated matters with stress on how they are carried out.[15] Random House also lists illicit with elicit as words that are easily confused.[15]

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  5. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  6. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  9. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  10. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  11. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  12. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
  13. ^ Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  14. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  15. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  16. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
  17. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins