pirate
/ˈpaɪɹət/ noun, verb, adjective
Forms pirates pirating pirated pyrate
- noun A criminal who plunders at sea; commonly attacking merchant vessels, though often pillaging port towns. “You should be cautious due to the Somali pirates.”
- noun An armed ship or vessel that sails for the purpose of plundering other vessels.
- noun (by extension) One who breaks intellectual property laws by reproducing protected works without permission.
- noun (ornithology) A bird which practises kleptoparasitism.
- noun A kind of marble in children's games.
- verb (transitive) To appropriate by piracy; to plunder at sea. “They pirated the tanker and sailed to a port where they could sell the ship and cargo.”
- verb (transitive, copyright law) To create and/or sell an unauthorized copy of.
- verb (transitive, copyright law) To knowingly obtain an unauthorized copy of. “Not willing to pay full price for the computer game, Heidi pirated a copy.”
- verb (intransitive) To engage in piracy. “He pirated in the Atlantic for years before becoming a privateer for the Queen.”
- verb (transitive, intransitive, Philippines) To entice an employee to switch from a competing company to one's own.
- adjective Illegally imitated or reproduced, said of a trademarked product or copyrighted work, or of the counterfeit itself.
- noun (sports) someone connected with any of a number of sports teams known as the Pirates, as a fan, player, coach etc.
- noun (soccer) someone connected with Bristol Rovers Football Club, as a fan, player, coach etc.
Synonyms
buccaneer corsair sea-robber bootlegger freebooter picaroon raider reaver sea rat sea rover plagiarize counterfeit pirated plagiarist plagiarizer plagiariser literary pirate sea robber pirate ship commandeer hijack highjack
Etymology
From Middle English pirate, pirat, pyrat, from Old French pirate, from Latin pīrāta (“pirate”), from Ancient Greek πειρατής (peiratḗs), from πεῖρα (peîra, “trial, attempt, plot”). Displaced native Old English wīċing, which was the word for both "pirate" and "viking".
Webster’s 1913
- noun A robber on the high seas; one who by open violence takes the property of another on the high seas; especially, one who makes it his business to cruise for robbery or plunder; a freebooter on the seas; also, one who steals in a harbor.
- noun An armed ship or vessel which sails without a legal commission, for the purpose of plundering other vessels on the high seas.
- verb To play the pirate; to practice robbery on the high seas.
- verb To publish, as books or writings, without the permission of the author.
Etymology [L. pirata, Gr. peril: cf. F. pirate. See Peril.]
Etymology [Cf. F. pirater.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “pirate”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details