Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Plural form of privateer.
  • verb Third-person singular simple present indicative form of privateer.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Then certain Southern privateers got lists of the New England whale-ships that were out, and lay in wait for them as whalers lie in wait for the leviathan.

    Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 11 Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen Elbert Hubbard 1885

  • The captains were called privateers, as were the ships.

    The Story of Manhattan Charles Hemstreet

  • The privateers were a resource in the interval ... they were really the armed force of the country. '

    Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts Rosalind Northcote

  • Among the captures by the privateers was a 13-inch brass mortar weighing nearly three thousand pounds, which was taken to Cambridge, where (according to the same veracious narrator of the “powder cry,” the witty Provincial colonel), it was the occasion of a great jubilation.

    Old Put The Patriot Over, Frederick A 1904

  • ARTICLE I. -- It is hereby agreed and stipulated, that all prisoners of war, held by either party, including those taken on private armed vessels, known as privateers, shall be exchanged upon the conditions and terms following:

    Andersonville — Volume 1 John McElroy 1887

  • ARTICLE I. -- It is hereby agreed and stipulated, that all prisoners of war, held by either party, including those taken on private armed vessels, known as privateers, shall be exchanged upon the conditions and terms following:

    Andersonville John McElroy 1887

  • A somewhat full discussion is due, inasmuch as the distress to commerce wrought by the privateers was a large factor in bringing the sea nations to wish for peace; just as the subsidies, which their commerce enabled them to pay the continental armies, besides keeping up their own, were the chief means by which the war was prolonged and

    The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 1877

  • Among the privateers was the Antelope, which was one of those that had come in on the previous afternoon.

    Held Fast For England A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) 1867

  • The targets of the privateers are the public interest and public goods.

    The World Can't Wait! Dennis Loo 2010

  • The time-honored solution: Hire private warriors - known as privateers to some, pirates to others - to do the fighting.

    wacotrib - Latest News Headlines 2009

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