pirates

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of pirate.

   Pirates raided merchant ships along the coast for decades.

   The film follows a crew of pirates searching for buried gold.

   Note

   A regular plural that carries every meaning of the singular with it: sea raiders, the armed ships they sailed, people who copy protected works, birds that steal other birds' food, even a kind of marble. Capitalized, the Pirates names sports teams, and a fan or player can be one of the Pirates. The same spelling also serves as the present-tense verb: the pirates is a noun, she pirates a verb.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of pirate.

   The company claims a rival pirates its designs and sells cheap copies.

   He routinely pirates expensive software rather than paying for a license.

   Note

   Most often it takes a direct object (a rival pirates designs, a user pirates software), and it covers both making an unauthorized copy and knowingly obtaining one. It can also stand alone, meaning simply to engage in piracy. In Philippine English it has a workplace sense: a company that pirates is luring employees away from a competitor, with or without an object naming them.

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