Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A pirate; one who cruises for plunder.
  • noun A ship or vessel that is employed in cruising for plunder.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • Just as the peaceful country-dweller calls the sea-rover a "pirate," and the stout burgher calls the man who breaks into his strong-box a "robber," so the selfish laborer applies the opprobrious epithet "scab" to the laborer who takes from him food and shelter by being more generous in the disposal of his labor-power.

    THE SCAB 2010

  • Son of Jonathan the Puritan, son of John who was a sea-rover, as his father Albert before him, who was the son of Mortimer, a pirate who was hanged in chains and died without issue.

    CHAPTER XXIX 2010

  • The tale is of Subienkow, a Polish sea-rover who as a youth in a wealthy family studied under a French tutor who taught him dancing and smuggled to him a copy of Voltaire.

    “Day had broken cold and gray, exceedingly cold and gray, . . . .” 2008

  • November dusk, and he was the eternal hero, one with the sea-rover on the prow of a Norse galley, one with Roland and Horatius, Sir

    This Side of Paradise 2003

  • But when I studied his face I knew that here was no sea-rover trapped by the gate.

    Sorceress of the Witch World Norton, Andre 1968

  • There was a man named Kol, he was a great sea-rover.

    The Story of Burnt Njal: the great Icelandic tribune, jurist, and counsellor Unknown

  • He was a thorough Corsair, with the rough code of honour, as well as the unprincipled rascality of the sea-rover.

    The Story of the Barbary Corsairs Stanley Lane-Poole

  • Perhaps the pirates best known to the English-speaking world are the buccaneers of the Spanish Main, who flourished exceedingly in the seventeenth century, and of whom many chronicles exist: principally owing to the labours of that John Esquemelin, a pirate of a literary turn of mind, who added the crime of authorship to the ill deeds of a sea-rover.

    Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean E. Hamilton Currey

  • Vikings, delighting in the wild life of sea-rover and pirate, into

    General History for Colleges and High Schools Philip Van Ness Myers

  • Stede Bonnet, late gentleman of the island of Barbadoes, honorably discharged as major from the army of his Majesty, since turned sea-rover for no apparent cause, and now one of the most notorious plunderers of the coast, faced his last fight.

    The Black Buccaneer 1934

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