buccaneer · noun — any of a group of seamen who cruised on their own account on the Spanish Main and in the Pacific in the 17th century, who were similar to pirates but did not prey on ships of their own nation. It carries an Arena rating of 1521, earned across 2 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, buccaneer ranks #204 of 17,188 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #418 of 17,197 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #913 of 17,165 for Most Satisfying to Say, #1,788 of 17,187 for Most Malleable Words.
buccaneer is pronounced /ˌbʌkəˈnɪɚ/.
Why “buccaneer” is a great word
A 17th-century adventurer who raided Spanish ships and settlements in the Caribbean and Pacific, often with unofficial sanction. From French boucanier ("a pirate; a curer of wild meats"), from boucan (a wooden frame for smoking meat), borrowed from Tupi mukém ("a rack, a wooden grill"), first attested in English c. 1660 for the hunters and c. 1680 for the pirates. Unlike a privateer, who sailed under a government's legal commission, or a corsair, who haunted the Mediterranean, the buccaneer was a creature of the New World's lawless margins. He is the acrid smoke of jerk pork hanging in a tropical lean-to, the rust-eaten hull of a captured galleon beached for careening, the particular swagger of men who answered to no flag but their own hunger—the dream of freedom that curdles, as it must, into the brute economics of theft.
❧ Essay by Lexicurio’s AI · definition, etymology & citations from published sources
Etymology
From French boucanier, from boucaner (“to smoke or broil meat and fish, to hunt wild beasts for their skins”), from boucan (“(Tupi-style) grill”), from Old Tupi moka'ẽ, mboka'ẽ (“wooden grill”). By surface analysis, buccan + -eer.
noun
- Any of a group of seamen who cruised on their own account on the Spanish Main and in the Pacific in the 17th century, who were similar to pirates but did not prey on ships of their own nation.e.g.““Heard of him!” cried the squire. “Heard of him, you say! He was the bloodthirstiest buccaneer that sailed.[…]”” — 1881–1882, Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island, London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 14 November 1883, →OCLC, part I (The Old Buccaneer), page 48:
- A pirate.
verb
- To engage in piracy against any but one's own nation's ships.e.g.“In 1596 and 1597 he bucaneered against Sao Thomi, the Portuguese slaving settlement off the coast of West Africa, and in the Spanish Main” — 1963, John Day, edited by Arthur Henry Bullen, The Works of John Day, page v:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
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