A pirate is a criminal who travels by water. Although most of the pirates target ships, others also attacked coastal towns.
Most of the time we think of pirates as criminals and daring or evil and cruel, but in reality most of them were ordinary people who were forced to turn to crime to make their living.
In the high seas, anyone who was not a captain would sleep in open, either in a hammock or on the ground. There were, however, ‘pirate havens’. The provinces of the Indian Ocean and Madagascar used to be safe havens for pirates to live, outside of the law and order.
The Pirates have been since long time. They threatened all the trade routes of ancient Greece, and they seized loads of grain and olive oil from Roman vessels.
Words to Describe Pirates
Follow are common adjectives used for describing Pirates in writing:
| Word | Meaning |
| algerian | relating to or characteristic of algeria |
| armed | characterized by having or bearing arms |
| barbary | a region of northern Africa on the Mediterranean coast between Egypt and Gibraltar; was used as a base for pirates from the 16th to 19th centuries |
| bloodthirsty | marked by eagerness to resort to violence and bloodshed |
| bold | fearless and daring |
| british | relating to or characteristic of Great Britain or its people or culture |
| chinese | relating to or characteristic of china |
| danish | relating to or characteristic of Denmark or the Danes |
| dead | unerringly accurate |
| desperate | dangerously reckless or violent as from urgency or despair |
| dutch | relating to the Netherlands or its people or culture |
| english | relating to or characteristic of England |
| famous | widely known and esteemed |
| fierce | ruthless in competition |
| foreign | of concern to or concerning the affairs of other nations |
| french | characteristic of france |
| greedy | immoderately desirous of acquiring e.g. wealth |
| greek | relating to or characteristic of Greece or the Greeks |
| irish | relating to or characteristic of Ireland |
| japanese | relating to or characteristic of Japan |
| malay | relating to or characteristic of malay |
| mediterranean | of or relating to or characteristic of or located near the Mediterranean Sea |
| muslim | relating to or supporting Islamism |
| norse | relating to Norway or its people |
| northern | characteristic of a region of the United States north of (approximately) the Mason-Dixon line |
| notorious | having an exceedingly bad reputation |
| portuguese | relating to or characteristic of Portugal or the people of Portugal |
| ruthless | without mercy or pity |
| scandinavian | relating to Scandinavia or its peoples or cultures |
| sea | sea pirates |
| spanish | relating to or characteristic of Spain or the people of Spain |
| turkish | relating to or characteristic of turkey |
You can also practice this pirate vocabulary worksheet to test the knowledge of pirate slang.
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