piracy.
Robbery at sea, a violation of international law; taking a ship away from the control of those who are legally entitled to it.
Meaning & usage
Robbery at sea, a violation of international law; taking a ship away from the control of those who are legally entitled to it.
How should the international community respond to Somali piracy?
A similar violation of international law, such as hijacking of an aircraft.
The unauthorized duplication of goods protected by intellectual property law.
Some video game consoles use specially designed cartridges to make software piracy more difficult.
The operation of an unlicensed radio or television station.
Kleptoparasitism.
Where this word comes from
From Medieval Latin pīrātia, from Classical Latin pīrāta + ia, or Ancient Greek πειρατεία (peirateía). The sense of “unauthorized duplication” developed in England between 1660 and 1710. The English Crown granted strict monopolies over book printing to specific guilds, such as the Stationers’ Company. Printing a book without permission was framed as an unlawful attack on the Crown’s authority and revenues. By labeling rogue printers as “pirates”, authorized booksellers equated them with sea robbers operating outside the bounds of civilized society. By the passage of the Statute of Anne in 1710, this usage was deeply entrenched in public consciousness as the definitive descriptor for the unauthorized duplication of books, and was later applied seamlessly to new media as they emerged.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.