pirate
Americannoun
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pirates
plural
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a person who robs or commits illegal violence at sea or on the shores of the sea.
- Synonyms:
- plunderer, corsair, buccaneer, freebooter
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a ship used by such persons.
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any plunderer, predator, etc..
confidence men, slumlords, and other pirates.
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a person who uses or reproduces the work or invention of another without authorization.
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Also called pirate stream. Geology. a stream that diverts into its own flow the headwaters of another stream, river, etc.
verb (used with object)
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pirates,
present (3rd person singular)
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pirated,
past participle, past
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pirating
present participle
verb (used without object)
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pirates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
pirated,
past participle, past
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pirating
present participle
noun
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a person who commits piracy
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-
a vessel used by pirates
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( as modifier )
a pirate ship
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a person who illicitly uses or appropriates someone else's literary, artistic, or other work
-
-
a person or group of people who broadcast illegally
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( as modifier )
a pirate radio station
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verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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piratelikeadjective
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piraticadjective
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piraticaladjective
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unpiratedadjective
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unpiraticaladjective
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piraticallyadverb
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unpiraticallyadverb
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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piratesimple
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piratessimple
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have piratedperfect
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has piratedperfect
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am piratingprogressive
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are piratingprogressive
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is piratingprogressive
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have been piratingperfect progressive
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has been piratingperfect progressive
Past
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piratedsimple
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had piratedperfect
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was piratingprogressive
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were piratingprogressive
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had been piratingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of pirate
1250–1300; Middle English < Latin pīrāta < Greek peirātḗs, equivalent to peirā- , variant stem of peirân to attack + -tēs agent noun suffix
Explanation
Yarg, matey! A cartoon pirate wears an eye patch, three-cornered hat, billowy shirt, and tall black boots. In real life, a pirate just boards ships and robs them of cargo, valuables, and money, often while wearing regular boring clothes. Pirates have been around since humans have been shipping valuable goods by boat across oceans. You can also use pirate as a verb to describe what these robbers do. Today, in addition to traditional pirates, there are pirates who use digital creative material, like books, movies, games, and music, without paying for it. If you pirate a movie, you make a copy and sell it illegally. The Greek root of pirate is peirates, "one who attacks."
Vocabulary lists containing pirate
Words Every Pirate Should Know
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September Words
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August Words
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
This fall, the academy will give him an honorary Oscar and he’s got plenty of Big Ridley on deck, including a pirate movie starring Hugh Jackman and, hopefully, his long-awaited take on the Bee Gees.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026
Radio Caroline, a former pirate radio that now mostly plays rock music, apologised in May after airing messages falsely announcing the monarch's death.
From Barron's ● Aug. 10, 2026
Apparently, a lot of people pirate his films so they can be completists.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 30, 2026
The game follows Kenway, also from Swansea, as he sails to the Caribbean as a privateer looking for wealth, and evolves into a pirate, then assassin.
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2026
“I guess a privateer would be a pirate in peacetime. But this is war. We only capture English ships.”
From "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" by Jean Lee Latham
McDonald’s latest Happy Meal collaboration unites the anime pirates of One Piece with Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
The actor who plays the lead character in the new Assassin's Creed video game about pirates has said he "tapped into" his childhood in Wales for the role.
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2026
It was definitely not cheap paying off these pirates, whether it was ransoms or tariffs.
From Salon ● Jul. 4, 2026
From 2003 through 2008, the association sued some 35,000 alleged song pirates.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 18, 2026
Recent research suggests they may have been taken from Angola by Portuguese slave traders and then captured at sea by British pirates flying the Dutch flag, who then sold them in Virginia.
From "In the Shadow of Liberty" by Kenneth C. Davis
The biggest players in Silicon Valley are building data centers to more efficiently run copyright-infringement machines built on terabytes of pirated material.
From Salon ● Aug. 3, 2026
Although the judge said Anthropic could use authors’ works for training, he backed the payout for acquiring and storing pirated books.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
Due to its global popularity, football has been found to be pirated at an "industrial scale", according to analysts.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
In downtown Mexico City, street vendors hawk pirated goods on the sidewalks, with team shirts for Mexico, Argentina and Colombia selling for $10-$20, roughly one-tenth the price of an official shirt for Mexico's national team.
From Barron's ● Jun. 6, 2026
Mary Anne searched her purse for a Kleenex, but pulled out instead a teaspoon pirated from her mother’s silver service.
From "The Great Santini" by Pat Conroy
Cox also repeatedly warned alleged infringers to knock it off when Sony flagged IP addresses suspected of pirating.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 25, 2026
The US Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday on whether internet service providers should be held liable for the online pirating of copyrighted music by their users.
From Barron's ● Dec. 1, 2025
As the company started to become “not so gung ho” about pirating “for legal reasons,” it brought on Tom Turvey from Google to obtain “all the books in the world” but still avoid “legal/practice/business slog.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2025
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Two men who helped run the once wildly popular pirating website Megaupload were each sentenced by a New Zealand court on Thursday to more than two years in prison.
From Washington Times ● Jun. 15, 2023
He didn’t consider acquiring free music online to be pirating or theft, though.
From "Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho" by Jon Katz
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
