Pirate

:This article is about sea pirates. For other uses see Pirate (disambiguation)

Other terms for pirates

Pirates who operated in the West Indies during the 17th century were known as buccaneers. The word comes from boucan, a wooden frame used for cooking meat (called a barbacoa elsewhere). These were used by French hunters called boucaniers. These hunters became pirates and took their name with them. The most famous person associated with buccaneers in the West Indies at that time was Henry Morgan.

Related Topics:
West Indies - Buccaneer - Barbacoa - Henry Morgan

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Dutch pirates were known as kapers or vrijbuiters ("plunderers"), the latter combining the words vrij meaning free, buit meaning loot, and the ending -er meaning agent. The word vrijbuiter was corrupted into the English freebooters and French flibustiers. It came back into English as filibusters, who were not pirates, but adventurers involving themselves in Latin American revolutions and coups and then finally came to mean the disruptive parliamentary maneuver of talking without stopping.

Related Topics:
Filibusters - Latin American - Revolution - Coups

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Pirates are called Lanun by both the Indonesians and the Malaysians who form the nations bracketing the Straits of Malacca. Originally a culture of seafaring people, their name became synonymous with piracy in the 15th century.

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Pirates with commissions from a government are called privateers or corsairs, which in modern Arabic is قرصان from the Turkish Korsan, which seems to have been derived from the European word, which in turn comes from the mediaeval Latin cursa, "raid, expedition, inroad".

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