buccaneer

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“
Do you mean to say, Miss Pat, that this buccaneer is the lady from the rural districts you were spouting about Miss Jinny gave her husky chuckle I'm the only original Sinbad," she declared with a very un-Persian hitch to her flowing trousers.

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Definitions (7)

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  1. noun A pirate, especially one of the freebooters who preyed on Spanish shipping in the West Indies during the 17th century.
  2. noun A ruthless speculator or adventurer.
  3. Word History
    The Errol Flynn-like figure of the buccaneer pillaging the Spanish Main may seem less dashing if we realize that the term buccaneer corresponds to the word barbecuer. The first recorded use of the French word boucanier, which was borrowed into English, referred to a person on the islands of Hispaniola and Tortuga who hunted wild oxen and boars and smoked the meat in a barbecue frame known in French as a boucan. This French word came from a Tupi word meaning "a rack used for roasting or for storing things, or a racklike platform supporting a house.” The original barbecuers seem to have subsequently adopted a more remunerative way of life, piracy, which accounts for the new meaning given to the word. Buccaneer is recorded first in 1661 in its earlier sense in English; the sense we are familiar with is recorded in 1690.

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Examples (50)

  • Kind cousin Nat shortly made his appearance, and holding Jack at arm's length, scanned him all over I was not quite certain when I first saw you whether you were a buccaneer from the Spanish Main, or some other cavalier of fortune; but I now see that you are my own honest, good Jack, in spite of your somewhat ferocious appearance!" —  John Deane of Nottingham Historic Adventures by Land and Sea
  • Do you mean to say, Miss Pat, that this buccaneer is the lady from the rural districts you were spouting about Miss Jinny gave her husky chuckle I'm the only original Sinbad," she declared with a very un-Persian hitch to her flowing trousers. —  Miss Pat at School
  • The large goose's liver, the largest, perhaps, that for some centuries had been bred and born in B and which was destined this very night to have solemnised the anniversary of Mrs. Deputy Recorder's birth; this liver, and no other, had been piratically attacked, boarded, and captured, in the very sanctuary of the kitchen, 'by that flibustier (said he) that buccaneer--that Paul Jones of a Juno.' —  The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg
  • Out of such conditions arose the buccaneer, alternately sailor and hunter, even occasionally a planter--roving, bold, unscrupulous, often savage, with an intense detestation of Spain. —  Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 "Brescia" to "Bulgaria"
  • For this, Captain Walters put him in irons on January 7th, 1681 He died on board ship on Monday, February 14th, 1681, off the coast of Chile COOKE, CAPTAIN JOHN This buccaneer was born in the Island of St. Christopher. "A brisk, bold man," he was promoted to the rank of quartermaster by Captain Yankey. —  The Pirates' Who's Who Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers
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Etymologies (1)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. French boucanier, from boucaner, to cure meat, from boucan, barbecue frame, of Tupian origin; akin to Tupi mukém, rack.
 

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/bukəˈnir/
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