Smuggling is moving goods across a border in secret to avoid duty or a ban. Drug smuggling, caught smuggling, smuggling routes.
The secrecy and the border together define it: bringing something in openly and paying the duty is importing. Historically smuggling in Britain was mostly tea, brandy and tobacco, and it was so widespread in the eighteenth century that it shaped whole coastal communities. Note smuggler; and that people smuggling and human trafficking are different offences, the second involving exploitation.
1nounsmugglingMoving goods across a border in secret.
“The fishermen were arrested for smuggling after police found drugs on their boat.”
smuggling is an illegal movement of goods.
Dutch
smokkelen
English
smuggle
English, today
smuggling
smuggle comes from smuckle, from Dutch smokkelen. From earlier smuckle, either from Dutch smokkelen (“to smuggle”), a frequentative form of Middle Dutch smugen (“to act secretly, be sneaky”), from Old Dutch smugan, or from nds-nl - or German Low German smuggeln; all are from Proto-West Germanic smeugan (“to creep; slip through or into”). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA