Meaning & use
buccaneer
A pirate, especially one of the sailors who raided Spanish ships and settlements in the Caribbean during the 17th century.
See it in a sentence
The museum exhibit told the story of a famous buccaneer who terrorized colonial trade routes.
The novel follows a young buccaneer searching for a legendary treasure.
A note on using this word
"Buccaneer" is also used figuratively for a bold, sometimes reckless entrepreneur, as in "a buccaneer of the tech industry."
Words with a similar meaning
pirateprivateer
Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.
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