Definition of "bootleggers" [bootleggers]

• Plural form of bootlegger. (noun)

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• "With the remaining troops he moved to a point near Fort MacLeod, a place well named Fort "Whoop-up," which was the headquarters of the bootleggers from the United States."
• "Americans were so well known as bootleggers, Europeans began referring to them with the Dutch word “Janke,” then slang for pirate, which is today pronounced “Yankee.”"
• "Nevertheless, I would urgently press upon the attention of the Congress the question whether some amendment of the internal revenue laws might not be of aid in prosecuting those malefactors, known in the Indian country as "bootleggers," who are engaged at once in defrauding the United States Treasury of taxes and, what is far more important, in debauching the Indians by carrying liquors illicitly into territory still completely under Federal jurisdiction."