Word.ws English Dictionary

blackleg

blackleg noun: a fatal cattle disease caused by the soil-borne bacterium Clostridium chauvoei; symptomatic anthrax.

Noun

blackleg (countable and uncountable, plural blacklegs)

  1. (uncountable) A fatal cattle disease caused by the soil-borne bacterium Clostridium chauvoei; symptomatic anthrax.
    • “Soon afther, some mischances begun to happen to the farmer's cattle; a horse tuk the staggers, a fine vale calf died o' the black-lig, an' some uv his sheep o' the rid wather[.]”1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 525
  2. (uncountable) A disease of potato crops caused by pectolytic bacteria, characterized by blackening and decay of the lower stem portion.
  3. (uncountable) A disease of brassicas caused by the fungus Leptosphaeria maculans
  4. (countable) A person who cheats in a game; a cheater, especially a dishonest bookmaker.
    • [H]ere, then, was a community of good taste and kind feeling, no sharpers, no black-legs, no wolves in sheep's clothing.1836 December 31, Laurie Todd, “Letter from Laurie Todd: Christmas and New-Year’s-Day”, in New-York Mirror, a Weekly Journal, Devoted to Literature and the Fine Arts, volume XIV, number 27, New York...
    • [Y]our friend Bloundell-Bloundell is a professional blackleg, and travels the Continent, where he picks up young gentlemen of fashion and fleeces them.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 32, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published...
  5. (countable) A person who takes the place of striking workers.
    • In the autumn there was a row at some cement works about the unskilled labour men. A union had just been started for them and all but a few joined. One of these blacklegs was laid for by a picket and knocked out of time.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XLIV, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, pages 364–365
    • It's in the evening after dark when the blackleg miner creeps to work. With his moleskin pants and his dirty shirt, there goes the blackleg miner.1970 June, traditional, “The Blackleg Miner” (track 4), in Hark! The Village Wait, performed by Steeleye Span

Verb

blackleg (third-person singular simple present blacklegs, present participle blacklegging, simple past and past participle blacklegged)

  1. To continue working whilst fellow workers strike.
    • Why was I there, munitioning, blacklegging, slaving as though my bread depended on it?1939, Philip George Chadwick, The Death Guard, page 154

Examples of blackleg in a sentence

  • They have no regard for respectability like yours — nothing between a baron and a blackleg.1852?, The Sporting Magazine (page 185)
  • I was branded a blackleg, card-sharper, and murderer.1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter II, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC, page 25:
  • Very few strikebreakers and blacklegs succeeded in assisting the company and those who did could expect to be roughed up.2023, David Brandon, The General Strike 1926: A New History, Pen and Sword Books Ltd, →ISBN, page 62:

Synonyms of blackleg

Forms of blackleg

Noun
pluralblacklegs
Verb
third-person singular presentblacklegs
present participleblacklegging
past participleblacklegged
pastblacklegged

Origin of blackleg

From black + leg.

Words formed from blackleg

Questions about blackleg

What does blackleg mean?
Blackleg means a fatal cattle disease caused by the soil-borne bacterium Clostridium chauvoei; symptomatic anthrax.
How do you use blackleg in a sentence?
They have no regard for respectability like yours — nothing between a baron and a blackleg.
What part of speech is blackleg?
Blackleg can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of blackleg?
The plural of blackleg is blacklegs.

Words near blackleg in the dictionary

  1. blackleaders
  2. blackleading
  3. blackleads
  4. Blackledge
  5. Blackledges
  6. blackleg
  7. blacklegged
  8. blacklegger
  9. blackleggers
  10. blackleggery
  11. blacklegging

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: blackleg (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-blackleg.wav.

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