Sunday, September 01, 2013

Fwd: corsair: Dictionary.com Word of the Day

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dictionary.com <doctor@dictionary.com>
Date: 2013/8/31
Subject: corsair: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
To: "Hector William G." <hectorpinillos@gmail.com>

Word of the Day for Saturday, August 31, 2013

corsair \KAWR-sair\, noun:

1. a pirate, especially formerly of the Barbary Coast.
2. a fast ship used for piracy.
3. (initial capital letter) Military. a gull-winged, propeller-driven fighter plane built for the U.S. Navy in World War II and kept in service into the early 1950s.

The cassique of Kiawah is already known to us, and we may well conceive that he bore himself toward the little wife of the famous corsair with all proper kindliness.
-- William Glimore Simms, The Cassique of Kiawah: A Colonial Romance, 1859

We were five days at sea in the situation I have just described, and the captain entertained hopes of making the desired port in two days more, when a vessel was descried bearing down upon us, which proved to be an Algerine corsair…
-- Francis Lathom, The Mysterious Freebooter, or The Days of Queen Bess, 1806

Corsair came to English in the 16th century from the medieval Latin cursus meaning "hostile voyage."

Read the full entry | See synonyms | Comment on today's word | Suggest tomorrow's word

Yesterday's word | Previous words | Help

Words of the Day? How about words of timeless wisdom?

Introducing our Quotes channel! "Life itself is a quotation." - Jorge Luis Borges
Check out the Quote of the Day ››

In Defense of the Figurative Use of Literally

Recently the wordsmiths of the United States have availed themselves once again to descry the figurative use of the word literally. This particular spate of analysis finds its origins in a Reddit post titled, "We did it guys, we finally killed English," which featured an image of Google's definition for the word. Since that popular post, journalists...
Read more ››

Dictionary.com Word of the Day	You are subscribed to the Word of the Day as: hectorpinillos@gmail.com
Subscriber since: June 03, 2013 Unsubscribe from the Word of the Day	To subscribe to the Word of the Day by email, please send a blank message to: join-wordoftheday@lists.lexico.com
©2013 by Dictionary.com, LLC. 555 12th Street Suite 500 Oakland CA 94607	Subscriptions to the Word of the Day can also be managed online
	Tell a friend about the Word of the Day!