pirating 1 of 2

noun

as in piracy
the act or pursuit of robbing ships at sea officially sanctioned pirating used to be common among warring nations

Synonyms & Similar Words

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pirating

2 of 2

verb

present participle of pirate
as in seizing
to take or make use of under a guise of authority but without actual right using pirated software that was subject to copyright

Synonyms & Similar Words

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of pirating
Noun
But, the pirating is essentially stopped. — Isabella Murray, ABC News, 29 Jan. 2026 No drugs were found, but Simpson’s home address had also come up during the investigation as one potentially linked to the purchase of satellite TV pirating equipment. — ArsTechnica, 22 May 2026
Verb
Anthropic has already been in the hot seat for getting caught pirating millions of digital copies of books. — James Folta, Literary Hub, 6 Feb. 2026 Cox won’t help defendants beat allegations of direct copyright infringement, those claims in which the company itself is accused of pirating. — ArsTechnica, 11 May 2026 The discovery ruling bolsters what’s increasingly looking like a winning argument over the practice of pirating books from shadow libraries. — Winston Cho, HollywoodReporter, 26 Nov. 2025 As evidence, the music labels enlisted a third-party company to flag users found to be pirating content via peer-to-peer file-sharing protocols such as BitTorrent. — Michael Kan, PC Magazine, 25 Mar. 2026 Partida later discovered another neighbor's video showing a man wearing the same hat stealing another package — raising concerns about a possible porch-pirating spree. — Amelia Mugavero, CBS News, 5 Dec. 2025 When pirating hindered the shipping of gold to Lisbon, Paraty pivoted to farming sugarcane (the basis of cachaça) and later became one of the earliest hubs for coffee growing in a country that is still the globe’s largest exporter of beans. — David Amsden, Travel + Leisure, 5 Nov. 2025 Sony lawyer argued Cox failed to act Paul Clement, the lawyer representing the music industry, countered that Cox is manufacturing a worst-case scenario after failing to take reasonable steps to respond to repeat offenders of peer-to-peer file sharing – the most common means of pirating music. — Maureen Groppe, USA Today, 25 Mar. 2026 Downtown Street Teams was founded in Palo Alto in 2005 by Eileen Richardson, a venture capitalist and former chief executive of Napster, a digital platform once known for pirating music that’s since become a streaming service. — Ethan Varian, Mercury News, 9 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for pirating
  1. piracy
  2. seizing
  3. stealing
  4. confiscating
  5. converting
  6. grabbing
  7. claiming
Noun
  • For years, stakeholders, including UK soccer channel Sky Sports, England’s Premier League professional soccer league, and the world’s largest European soccer streamer, DAZN, blamed Fire Sticks for a lot of streaming piracy.
    — Scharon Harding, ArsTechnica, 30 June 2026
  • After that, the Memorandum of Understanding invites Iran to commit piracy by charging ships to transit the strait.
    — Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 19 June 2026
Definition of piracy
Verb
  • Authorities served a search warrant at the rescue on May 1, seizing electronics, business records, financial records, firearms, and other evidence, according to the sheriff.
    — Thao Nguyen, USA Today, 30 June 2026
  • For leadership teams worldwide, this requires striking a careful balance between responding to immediate disruption and seizing arising opportunities to bolster growth.
    — Anna Marks, Forbes.com, 30 June 2026
Definition of seizing
Verb
  • Peterson left office in 2017 after pleading guilty to stealing from his own campaign fund.
    — Jakob Rodgers, Mercury News, 7 July 2026
  • He’s accused of stealing $3 million from the client’s Northern Trust account involving about 200 transactions over a decade until he was fired from the private wealth-management bank in fall 2024.
    — Jay Weaver, Miami Herald, 6 July 2026
Definition of stealing
Verb
  • In some videos, survivors accused soldiers of looting apartments and confiscating donated supplies—claims that remain difficult to independently verify but have fueled widespread outrage.
    — Antonio María Delgado, Miami Herald, 29 June 2026
  • Amid anecdotal reports that airport security services have been confiscating bottles of ranch dressing that sports tourists have tried to smuggle out of the country, Kraft Heinz came up with a TSA-friendly size of ranch dressing.
    — Cynthia Littleton, Variety, 25 June 2026
Definition of confiscating
Verb
  • Egypt brought the calm, cool, collected factors to the shootout, converting on all four attempts from Mahmoud Saber, Rami Rabia, Mohamed Salah and Hossam Abdelmaguid.
    — Nick Harris, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 3 July 2026
  • The key difference lies in the process for converting the fissile material to be bomb usable (chemical reprocessing in the case of plutonium, rather than enrichment, which can be done covertly and in small batches).
    — Ilan Berman, Forbes.com, 2 July 2026
Definition of converting
Verb
  • Americans are grabbing their passports and fleeing the country in hopes of leaving the nation’s problems behind.
    — Emma Burleigh, Fortune, 2 July 2026
  • Swanson argues those behind-the-scenes improvements have done more to modernize logistics than many of the industry’s headline-grabbing automation projects.
    — Glenn Taylor, Footwear News, 2 July 2026
Definition of grabbing
Verb
  • Also requested were documents related to a lawsuit, recently settled for $135,000, claiming Kramer had given an improper assessment of a property and retaliated against an employee who complained.
    — Jakob Rodgers, Mercury News, 7 July 2026
  • In December, former employee Joshua Denton sued the brewery, claiming management ignored years of warnings about OSHA safety violations, did not comply with ADA regulations and wrongfully terminated him.
    — Amber Gaudet, Charlotte Observer, 6 July 2026
Definition of claiming

Browse Nearby Words

pirates
pirating
pirogue
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Cite this Entry

“Pirating.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/pirating. Accessed 7 Jul. 2026.

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More from Merriam-Webster on pirating

Nglish: Translation of pirating for Spanish Speakers

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