But to follow the arc of this craze, like others that have come before (remember cigar bars?) is to see just how quickly something that was once illicit — and acquired notoriety because of that very illicitness — can lose its sheen of mystery and become, well, rather uncool.
"The illicitness of it made it more exciting".
Like the password speak-easies of Chicago in the 1920s and the wild after-sunrise dance parties in New York of the 1980s and '90s, their illicitness is the key to their allure.
The F.B.I. investigation is still in its earliest stages, and Olympus stated in a release that "there were no facts of illegality or illicitness related to a series of transactions regarding our acquisition of Gyrus".
People wanted to get up and dance, as Mr. Okrent pointed out, and Prohibition, or the speakeasy culture, conveniently (and for the first time) mingled men, women and alcohol in an atmosphere of congenial illicitness.
The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise.
Good though it is to eat (and it is) when our secret food becomes mainstream, even hip, it suddenly lacks the frisson of illicitness.
Since one of the most compelling elements of erotic attraction is the taboo of illicitness (any work situation qualifies), it is little wonder that it is hard to put the genie back in the bottle when the shoot is over.
So the element of illicitness and the adrenalin rush still exist when painting here".
With winning restraint, Haynes captures both the intimacy and illicitness of Highsmith's writing, from the Brief Encounter opening (private liaisons interrupted in public), through Douglas Sirk-inflected melodrama (domestic pain behind a handsome facade) to grace notes of film noir (love as a crime scene, a handgun in a motel suitcase).
Our exchange reeked of geopolitical illicitness; we were mere kilometres from the Bridge of Spies, where, during the Cold War, prisoners were traded.
