Con·tra·band n.
 1. Illegal or prohibited traffic.
    Persons the most bound in duty to prevent contraband, and the most interested in the seizures.   --Burke.
 2. Goods or merchandise the importation or exportation of which is forbidden.
 3. A negro slave, during the Civil War, escaped to, or was brought within, the Union lines. Such slave was considered contraband of war. [U.S.]
 Contraband of war, that which, according to international law, cannot be supplied to a hostile belligerent except at the risk of seizure and condemnation by the aggrieved belligerent.