illicitly
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The method is widely used across the industry, but US officials say Chinese firms have deployed it at scale to illicitly copy proprietary American systems.
From Barron's ● Jul. 22, 2026
Since February, Anthropic has accused Alibaba and several other Chinese AI labs of illicitly distilling its models-the practice of training a new model on the outputs of another.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026
The Vatican said on Thursday: "The sacred ministers of the Society of St Pius X administer the sacraments illicitly, while the sacrament of penance they administer and the marriages they witness are invalid."
From BBC ● Jul. 2, 2026
Blanche said the agency would instead target only the terrorists and drug traffickers who illicitly used crypto, not the platforms that hosted them.
From Salon ● Jan. 24, 2026
He was a born anatomist and so devoted to his studies that he sometimes illicitly borrowed limbs, organs, and other parts from cadavers and took them home for leisurely dissection.
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
