Word.ws English Dictionary

black-bagging

black-bagging is the present participle and gerund of black-bag.

Meaning of black-bag

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
  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

See all 3 meanings of black-bag

Questions about black-bagging

What is black-bagging the present participle and gerund of?
Black-bagging is the present participle and gerund of black-bag.

Words near black-bagging in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: black-bagging (page history and authors); 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-bagging.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/black-bagging. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.