From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishpiratepi‧rate1 /ˈpaɪərət $ ˈpaɪrət/ ●○○ noun [countable] 1 STEALsomeone who sails on the seas, attacking other boats and stealing things from them → piracy2 COPYsomeone who dishonestly copies and sells another person’s work → piracy Computer game pirates cost the industry twenty million pounds a year.pirate videos/CDs/software etc3 → pirate radio/TV (station) —piratical /paɪˈrætɪkəl, pə-/ adjective literary
Examples from the Corpus
pirate• But there may be pirates hiding among them.• A two-hour boat trip will take you to Lundy Island, once famous for its pirates and now for its puffins.• More pirates were starting to climb into the stockade.• Will convinces the pair not to eat them, but instead join forces in the hunt for the pirates and their captives.• Instead, park officials announced Friday, the pirates will run after women who carry trays of food.• Monarchs pretended to close their eyes to it while they shared the loot and then honored the pirate heroes.• Terror-stricken, the pirates ordered the helmsman to put in to land.• Happy Computing could have its own problem with pirates.pirate videos/CDs/software etc• More than 1,000 pirate videos and 63 video recorders were also seized.• Muddying the issue of how much pirated software is on the Internet is the tremendous amount of software legally available to download.• Time allowed 00:21 Read in studio Detectives have seized around five hundred suspected pirate videos in a joint operation with copyright investigators.• Inside the home were pirate videos, hundreds of blank cassettes and cassette casings, they said.piratepirate2 verb [transitive] COPYto illegally copy and sell another person’s work such as a book, DVD, or computer program pirated copies of the best-selling computer games► see thesaurus at copy→ See Verb tableExamples from the Corpus
pirate• But the head of a coalition opposing the bill said laws already on the books outlaw electronic pirating.• Lotus had charged Borland with pirating its commands for use in a competing program.• The suit claims Apple pirated key elements of Xerox software for its Lisa and Macintosh user interfaces.• They were also widely pirated, Rowe notes, depriving Fly of some earnings.• Muddying the issue of how much pirated software is on the Internet is the tremendous amount of software legally available to download.From Longman Business Dictionarypiratepi‧rate /ˈpaɪərətˈpaɪrət/ noun [countable]LAW1a person or organization that dishonestly copies and sells films, tapes etc for which the COPYRIGHT (=legal ownership) belongs to othersManufacturers fear that the city may emerge as a new centre for the software pirates. —pirate verb [transitive]Microsoft Corp. charged that a Shanghai-based company pirated the game programs.pirated videotapes2pirate radio/TV (station) illegal radio or television broadcasts, or the station sending them outAbout 80 pirate cable systems have brought US network news into thousands of homes.3a person who steals from a ship at seaOrigin pirate1 (1200-1300) Latin pirata, from Greek peirates, from peiran “to attack” 