Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A pirate, especially one of the freebooters who plundered Spanish shipping in the West Indies during the 17th century.
  • noun A ruthless speculator or adventurer.
  • intransitive verb To plunder shipping; act as a buccaneer.
  • intransitive verb To show boldness and enterprise, as in business, often in a reckless or unscrupulous way.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To act the part of a buccaneer; to live as a piratical adventurer or sea robber.
  • noun A robber upon the sea; a pirate; -- a term applied especially to the piratical adventurers who made depredations on the Spaniards in America in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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

  • noun nautical Any of a group of seamen who cruised on their own account on the Spanish Main and in the Pacific in the 17th century; similar to pirates but did not prey on ships of their own nation.
  • noun A pirate.
  • verb To engage in piracy against any but one's own nation's ships.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb live like a buccaneer
  • noun someone who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without having a commission from any sovereign nation

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French boucanier, from boucaner, to cure meat, from boucan, barbecue frame, of Tupian origin; akin to Tupí mukém, rack.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • the going rate for piercing a pirate's ears. Shiver me timbers!

    February 20, 2007

  • Haha! Sionnach, that puts me in mind of one of my dad's old jokes. Don't recall the entire thing, but it ends with "Where are your buccaneers?" "Under me buckin' hat!"

    :-)

    February 20, 2007

  • The old (emphasis on "old") joke that this reminds me of is: Buccaneer? Hellova price to pay for corn!

    July 12, 2007

  • Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers; it as reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage... --Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)

    March 9, 2011

  • Daffynition: too much to pay for corn (a-buck-an-ear)

    June 16, 2012