Pirate

How to spell pirate

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce pirate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does pirate mean?

1. nounA person who robs ships at sea or raids coastal settlements.
2. nounA person who illegally copies and distributes protected films, music, or software.
3. verbTo copy and use or distribute someone's protected work without permission.

Pirate in a sentence

• noun

  The museum displayed weapons once carried by a Caribbean pirate.

• noun

  The studio sued a software pirate for distributing cracked copies online.

• verb

  The company warned staff not to pirate the licensed design software.

• noun

  The novel follows a pirate who buries treasure on a remote island.

• noun

  Each pirate caught selling counterfeit films faced a heavy fine.

• verb

  It is illegal to pirate films and share them on streaming sites.

Where does pirate come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word goes back to the ancient Greek peirates, meaning 'one who attacks' or 'a raider', which was built on the verb peiran, 'to attempt' or 'to make an attack on', and behind that the noun peira, 'an attempt or trial'. So a pirate was literally someone who tried his luck by force, attacking ships and coasts. Latin borrowed the word as pirata, and from there it passed into Old French and entered English around the 1300s for a sea robber. The same Greek root for 'trial, attempt' survives in the word 'empirical', which describes knowledge gained by experiment. From the 1700s onward the sense widened to anyone who steals protected work, giving the modern meanings of copying books, music, or software illegally.

How the word is built

• pirat- (from Greek peirates: one who attacks)
• -e