Word.ws English Dictionary

buttlegging

buttlegging noun: the smuggling of cigarettes.

Noun

buttlegging (uncountable)

  1. (informal) The smuggling of cigarettes.
    • Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy, who conducted Senate buttlegging hearings last month, says that the Mob's infiltration has led to "increasing violent crime: extortion and bribery, truck hijackings, armed robberies, serious assaults […]1977, Time, volume 110, numbers 19-26, page 84

Origin of buttlegging

Blend of butt + bootlegging.

Questions about buttlegging

What does buttlegging mean?
Buttlegging means the smuggling of cigarettes.
What part of speech is buttlegging?
Buttlegging is a noun.

Words near buttlegging in the dictionary

  1. buttkissers
  2. buttle
  3. buttled
  4. buttlegger
  5. buttleggers
  6. buttlegging
  7. Buttleman
  8. Buttlemans
  9. Buttler
  10. Buttlers
  11. buttles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: buttlegging (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: “buttlegging.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/buttlegging. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.