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Other terms for pirates

Pirates who operated in the West Indies during the 17th century were known as buccaneers. The word derives from boucan, a wooden frame used for cooking meat (also called a barbacoa), used by French hunters called boucaniers. (From the French word boucan, a smoke house for smoking pork). They were semi-legal, attacking Spanish ships when France, England, and Holland were trying to gain territory on the Spanish Main. When these hunters became pirates, they took their name with them. The most famous person associated with buccaneers in the West Indies was Henry Morgan.

Dutch pirates were known as kapers, zeerovers or vrijbuiters ("pirates"), the latter combining the words vrij meaning free, buiter meaning looter. The word vrijbuiter was loaned into English as freebooter and into French as flibustier. The French loan-word returned to English in the form of filibusters, adventurers who became involved in Latin American revolutions and coups. It finally came to mean the disruptive parliamentary maneuver of talking nonstop.

Pirates are called Lanun by both the Indonesians and the Malaysians who form the nations bracketing the Straits of Malacca. Originally a culture of seafaring people, the Lanun name became synonymous with piracy in the 15th century. But the dedicated word for pirate in Indonesian Language is Bajak. This word's etymology is not clear.

Wōkòu were pirates who raided the coastlines of China and Korea from the 13th century onwards.

Pirates with commissions from a government are called privateers or corsairs. In modern Arabic the word is قرصان from the Turkish Korsan, which seems to have been derived from the European word. Corsair comes from the medieval Latin cursa, meaning "raid, expedition, inroad".

Pirates are also known as picaroons. This term comes from the Spanish word picarón, meaning "rogue."