trafficking

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The buying, selling, or exchange of goods carried out illegally.

   Investigators traced the trafficking of counterfeit electronics to a single warehouse.

   The treaty aims to curb the trafficking of cultural artifacts across borders.

   Similarsmuggling, dealing

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of traffic.

   Authorities charged the men with trafficking endangered birds.

   The cartel had been trafficking weapons for nearly a decade.

   Note

   The spelling adds a k so the hard sound survives before -ing, the same move English makes in panicking and mimicking. That is why this form looks identical to the participle of traffick. The verb works both ways: with an object (trafficking weapons) or on its own, meaning simply to trade. An older shade means bargaining meanly, for mere profit.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of traffick.

   The old records describe sailors trafficking in exotic wares.

   They had been trafficking across the channel for many seasons.

   Note

   Here the base verb itself is spelled with a k. Traffick is an older variant of traffic that now leans toward illicit goods, while the noun spelled traffick is archaic. In the participle the two spellings meet and cannot be told apart. For modern writing, traffic, trafficked, trafficking is the safe set, and the k-spelling of the base verb reads as old-fashioned.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   In biology, the transport of an enzyme or other protein to its destination, within a cell or through the surrounding tissue.

   The study examined the trafficking of the enzyme across muscle tissue.

   Abnormal trafficking of the protein led to a buildup in the surrounding tissue.

   Similartransport, movement

   Note

   A laboratory borrowing from the everyday word for moving vehicles and goods: biochemists picture a protein's journey through tissue as flow along routes. It carries none of the overtones of the criminal sense. In writing it usually takes of plus the protein, as in the trafficking of the enzyme. Adjectives such as abnormal mark a protein that moves where it should not.

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