pirate
see also: Pirate
Pronunciation
  • IPA: /ˈpaɪ̯(ə)ɹɪt/, /ˈpaɪ̯(ə)ɹət/
Noun

pirate (plural pirates)

  1. A criminal who plunders at sea; commonly attacking merchant vessels, though often pillaging port towns.
    You should be cautious due to the Somali pirates.
  2. An armed ship or vessel that sails for the purpose of plundering other vessels.
  3. One who breaks intellectual property laws by reproducing protected works without permission
    • 2001, unidentified insider, quoted in John Alderman, Sonic Boom: Napster, MP3, and the New Pioneers of Music, Da Capo Press, ISBN 978-0-7382-0777-3, page 178 ↗:
      And Gnutella, Freenet and other pirate tools will offer plunderings beyond Fanning's fantasies.
    • 2008, Martha Vicinus, Caroline Eisner, Originality, Imitation, and Plagiarism: Teaching Writing in the Digital Age, page 21:
      If we untangle the claim that technology has turned Johnny Teenager into a pirate, what turns out to be fueling it is the idea that if Johnny Teenager were to share his unauthorized copy with two million of his closest friends the effect on a record company would be pretty similar to the effect of some CD factory's creating two million CDs and selling them cheap.
  4. (ornithology) A bird which practises kleptoparasitism.
  5. A kind of marble in children's games.
    • 1999, Abdelkader Benali, ‎Susan Massotty, Wedding by the Sea (page 60)
      Most of the time it went fine; some of his classmates had so many marbles they could have opened up their own shop in smurfs, pirates, purple aggies and pink panthers.
Synonyms Translations Translations
  • Spanish: barco pirata
Translations Verb

pirate (pirates, present participle pirating; past and past participle pirated)

  1. (transitive) To appropriate by piracy, plunder at sea.
    They pirated the tanker and sailed to a port where they could sell the ship and cargo.
  2. (transitive, intellectual property) To create and/or sell an unauthorized copy of
  3. (transitive, intellectual property) To knowingly obtain an unauthorized copy of
    Not willing to pay full price for the computer game, Heidi pirated a copy.
    • 2002, John Sayle Watterson, College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy, page 343
      In the 1970s cable companies began to pirate some of the football games that the networks had contracted to televise.
    • 2007, Diane Kresh, Council on Library and Information Resources, The Whole Digital Library Handbook, page 85
      Many college students now expect to sample, if not outright pirate, movies, music, software, and TV programs.
  4. (intransitive) To engage in piracy.
    He pirated in the Atlantic for years before becoming a privateer for the Queen.
Synonyms Translations Translations
  • French: pirater
  • German: raubkopieren, schwarzkopieren
  • Portuguese: piratear
  • Spanish: piratear
Translations
  • Spanish: piratear
Adjective

pirate

  1. Illegally imitated or reproduced, said of a trademarked product or copyrighted work, or of the counterfeit itself.
Synonyms Translations
Pirate
Noun

pirate (plural pirates)

  1. (sports) someone connected with any of a number of sports teams known as the Pirates, as a fan, player, coach etc.
    1. (soccer) someone connected with Bristol Rovers Football Club, as a fan, player, coach etc.



This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.004
Offline English dictionary