Word.ws English Dictionary

black-bag

black-bag adjective: involving sophisticated clandestine methods for gaining unauthorized entry and obtaining information.

Adjective

black-bag (not comparable)

  1. Involving sophisticated clandestine methods for gaining unauthorized entry and obtaining information.
    • Watergate turned out to be a black-bag operation by former CIA employees.
    • Holden's SEAL training had covered clandestine penetrations, but never black-bag jobs2011, Jerry Ahern, Decision Time: The Defender, →ISBN

Verb

black-bag (third-person singular simple present black-bags, present participle black-bagging, simple past and past participle black-bagged)

  1. To break in to a place without authorization as part of a clandestine operation.
    • He'd been tapped, bugged, and black-bagged under Nixon and Clinton, and under the present conditions all the cops needed to listen in was a thumbs-up from an Eagle Scout or better.2004, Loren D. Estleman, Poison Blonde: An Amos Walker Novel, →ISBN
    • Nothing jimmied. Nothing damaged. She'd been black-bagged by a pro.2011, Adrian Phoenix, J. F. Lewis, Jeri Smith-Ready, Urban Fantasy Collection, →ISBN
  2. To kidnap in order to make someone disappear (as opposed to kidnapping for ransom).
    • When witches and demons caused enough trouble, the Union had a tendency to black-bag the baddies and toss them into a detention center.2016, S.M. Reine, Once Darkness Falls
    • It'll be tough to black-bag him. They may have to go all the way.2017, Scott Reardon, The Prometheus Man, →ISBN

Examples of black-bag in a sentence

  • Con Keeler was past his fortieth birthday and a veteran of more black-bag jobs than he could count.2012, Paul Lieberman, Gangster Squad: Covert Cops, the Mob, and the Battle for Los Angeles, →ISBN:
  • In an interesting coda that perhaps presaged the black-bag jobs of the Watergate era, an unknown person or persons broke into Dr.2015, James Wynbrandt, The Excruciating History of Dentistry, →ISBN:
  • Before dawn, NEST black-bagged Ivan's building — not the Nuclear Emergency Search Teams, their shadows whose S stands for Strike.2011, Harlan Coben (Ed.), The Best American Mystery Stories 2011:

Forms of black-bag

Adjective
alternative formblack bag
alternative formblackbag
Verb
third-person singular presentblack-bags
present participleblack-bagging
past participleblack-bagged
pastblack-bagged

Origin of black-bag

From the term black bag meaning a case containing burglary tools. Sense 2 refers to the practice of blindfolding a detainee with a bag or sack.

Questions about black-bag

What does black-bag mean?
Black-bag means involving sophisticated clandestine methods for gaining unauthorized entry and obtaining information.
How do you use black-bag in a sentence?
Con Keeler was past his fortieth birthday and a veteran of more black-bag jobs than he could count.
What part of speech is black-bag?
Black-bag can be an adjective or a verb.

Words near black-bag in the dictionary

  1. black-backed gulls
  2. black-backed jackal
  3. black-backed jackals
  4. black-backed water tyrant
  5. black-backed water tyrants
  6. black-bag
  7. black-bagged
  8. black-bagging
  9. black-bags
  10. black-bean sauce
  11. black-bean sauces

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: black-bag (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “black-bag.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/black-bag. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.