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Corsair   /kˈɔrsɛr/   Listen
Corsair

noun
1.
A pirate along the Barbary Coast.  Synonym: Barbary pirate.
2.
A swift pirate ship (often operating with official sanction).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Corsair" Quotes from Famous Books



... old man Borrow never had an equal, I think. There has been much talk of the vigour of Shelley’s friend, E. J. Trelawny. I knew that splendid old corsair, and admired his agility of limb and brain; but at seventy Borrow could have walked off with Trelawny under his arm. At seventy years of age, after breakfasting at eight o’clock in Hereford Square, he would walk to Putney, meet one or more of us at Roehampton, roam about ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... enjoyed the lurid lights of the French Revolution with Scaramouche, or the brilliant buccaneering days of Peter Blood, or the adventures of the Sea-Hawk, the corsair, will now welcome with delight a turn in Restoration London with the ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... have recognized the elegant and effeminate clubman, in this corsair with broad shoulders, a skin the color of tan, with very red lips, who rolled a little in his walk; who seemed to be stifled in his black dress-coat, but who still retained the distinguished manners and bearing of a nobleman of the last century, one of those who, when he was ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... attended a performance of "The Corsair" at the Baldwin Theater, two proscenium boxes having been reserved for the members of the two teams, all of whom were in full dress, and it seemed to me as if we were attracting fully as much attention, if not more, than were ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... hours before anybody else has begun to move. Twenty minutes at least must have elapsed ere Dick found himself in a dainty outrigger with a long pair of sculls, fairly launched on the bosom of the Thames—more than time for the corsair, if corsair he should be, to have sailed far out of sight with false, consenting Maud in the direction ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... "Blackbeard" than to Nelson and Collingwood. Later came the time when organized Governments in the Greek cities and on the Phoenician coast kept fleets on the land-locked sea to deal with piracy and protect peaceful commerce. But the prizes that allured the corsair were so tempting, that piracy revived again and again, and even in the late days of the Roman Republic the Consul Pompey had to conduct a maritime war on a large scale to clear the sea of ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... England man, Eliphalet Simmons, had brought his schooner from the Mediterranean, and he told in a manner as brief and dry as his own log how he had outsailed one Barbary corsair by day, and by changing his course had tricked another in the night. But the voyage had been most profitable, and Master Jonathan duly entered the amount of gain in an account book, with a reward of ten pounds to Captain Simmons, five pounds ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler

... with his fierce appetites and Satanic pride, his mistresses and his perjuries, his hard impudence and insulting sarcasms, she knows only verbally, so to speak. The words which describe such a character she interprets with her fancy, enlightened by a reminiscence of Childe Harold and the Corsair. The result is a compound of vulgar rascalities and impotent Byronics. Every person who interprets her description by a knowledge of what profligacy is, cannot fail to see that she is absurdly connecting certain virtues, of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... only as a lyric poet. For spirit and perfection of form what could be more perfect than the "Cancin del Pirata"? Like Byron in the "Corsair," he extols the lawless liberty of the buccaneer. Byron was here his inspiration rather than Hugo. The "Chanson de Pirates" cannot stand comparison with either work. But Espronceda's indebtedness to Byron was in this case very slight. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... upon our own regular force. It greatly increased the difficulty of manning the navy, and the occasional large profits had a demoralising influence on detached cruiser commanders. It tended to keep alive the mediaeval corsair spirit at the expense of the modern military spirit which made for direct operations against the enemy's armed forces. It was inevitable that as the new movement of opinion gathered force it should carry with it a conviction that for operating against sea-borne trade sporadic ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... to be wished Contemplation he, and valor, formed Content, humble livers in —, farewell Contentment, the noblest mind, has Contradiction, woman's a Cord be loosed Corn, reap an acre of Corporations, no souls Corsair's name, he left a Cottage, the soul's dark Cottage, stood beside a Counsels, perplex and dash maturest Counselors, safety in the multitude of Country, undiscovered —, God made the Courage, screw ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various

... same time, with this most patriotic and prudent deed before us, a wilder measure than even that was adopted, and it was quelled only by force. You all remember the events. In February, '33, Eugene Brifault, in his 'Corsair,' alluded jestingly to the mysterious pregnancy of the mother of Henry V., Duke of Bordeaux, as did every one, she then being imprisoned at Baye because of her prior conspiracy to place her son on the throne, and her secret marriage in Italy being unrevealed. The Legitimists of 'Le Revenant' ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... exhibits. These include the Boeing B-52B jet bomber that dropped the United States' last air burst H-bomb in 1962, and a 280-mm (11 inches) Atomic cannon, once America's most powerful field artillery. Also found in this area is a Navy TA-7C (a modified A-7B) Corsair II fighter-bomber, a veteran of the Vietnam War. Many other nuclear weapons systems, rockets, and missiles ...
— Trinity [Atomic Test] Site - The 50th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb • The National Atomic Museum

... I older grew, Joining a corsair's crew, O'er the dark sea I flew With the marauders. Wild was the life we led; Many the souls that sped, Many the hearts that bled, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... he represents, in clear lineaments, the nobleman, the traveller, the poet, and the debauchee, of the beginning of the nineteenth century. In all his works he unconsciously depicts himself. He is in turn Childe Harold, Lara, the Corsair, and Don Juan. He affected to despise the world's opinion so completely that he has made himself appear worse than he really was—more profane, more intemperate, more licentious. It is equally true that this tendency, added to the fact that he was a handsome peer, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... fired the corsair's blood. "Dy'ar think we daresent," said Hickory, desperately, but with an uneasy glance at Polly. "I'll show ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte

... members of the British Language were present when, in 1546, the English commander Upton attacked and defeated the famous Corsair Dragut at Tarschien in Malta? Also, what members of it were present when the Chevalier Repton, Grand Prior of England in 1551, was killed, after signally defeating the Turks in another attack which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various

... whilst she lived. He is also my very good friend, and, besides that, secretary to that most noble lord Francois de Scepeaux, Marshal de Vieilleville. Carloix is a discreet man; but I gathered enough from him to guess that it would be safer for a Christaudin to be a prisoner with a Barbary corsair than be in Paris now, despite all the hobnobbing that goes on between the Court ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... kind, such as the fictions of Richardson and Sterne. In England, Scott became the foremost representative of "Goetzism," and Byron of "Wertherism." The pessimistic, sardonic heroes of "Manfred," "Childe Harold," and "The Corsair" were the latest results of the "Il Penseroso" literature, and their melodramatic ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... marshes of Sipontum at its edges. But this particular defect of the place is not Manfred's fault, since the city was razed to the ground by the Turks in 1620, and then built up anew; built up, says Lenormant, according to the design of the old city. Perhaps a fear of other Corsair raids induced the constructors to adhere to the old plan, by which the place could be more easily defended. Not much of Man-fredonia seems to have been completed when ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... the chief quality she would have demanded in a man. Betty was one of those ardent, vivid girls, with an intense capacity for hero-worship, and I would have supposed that something more in the nature of a plumed knight or a corsair of the deep would have been her ideal. But, of course, if there is a branch of modern industry where the demand is greater than the supply, it is the manufacture of knights and corsairs; and nowadays a girl, however flaming her aspirations, has to take the best she can ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... may I but escape the wild corsair, Nor taken be, and after sold for slave! Rather than this may lion, wolf, or bear, Tiger, or other beast, if fiercer rave, Me with his claws and rushes rend and tear, And drag my bleeding body to his cave." So saying she her golden hair offends, ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... continued the maiden, "Irene went a-rowing on the sea with some girl friends. The weather was fine, the sea smooth, and they sang their songs and made merry, to their hearts' content. Suddenly the sail of a corsair appeared on the smooth mirror of the ocean, pounced straight down upon the maidens in their boat, and before they could reach the nearest shore, they were all seized and carried ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... Byron wrote during his brilliant sojourn in London, amid the whirl of social gayeties, are The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Parisina, Lara, and The Siege of Corinth. These narrative poems are romantic tales of oriental passion and coloring, which show the influence of Scott. They are told with a dash and a fine-sounding rhetoric well fitted to ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... saved only through the devotion of her black nurse, who sucked alike poison and death from the wound. Another time, as she was on a voyage with her parents, the vessel was in danger of being captured by a corsair; and a third time a powerful whirlwind carried into the waves of the sea the little Francoise, who was walking on the shore, but a large black dog, her companion and favorite, sprang after her, seized her dress with its teeth, and carried ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... orders for the Neapolitan expedition; I won't say your good nature, which is excessive for I think your tenderness of the little Queen(974) a little outree, especially as their apprehensions might have added great weight to your menaces. I would threaten like a corsair, though I would conquer with all the good-breeding of a Scipio. I most devoutly wish you success; you are sure of having me most happy with any honour you acquire. You have quite soared above all fear of Goldsworthy, and, I think, must appear of consequence ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... Tripoli, one of the Barbary States, had begun depredations upon American commerce and the President had sent a small squadron for protection. A ship of this squadron, the schooner Enterprise, had fallen in with a Tripolitan man-of-war and after a fight lasting three hours had forced the corsair to strike her colors. But since war had not been declared and the President's orders were to act only on the defensive, the crew of the Enterprise dismantled the captured vessel and let her go. Would Congress, asked the President, take under consideration the advisability of placing our ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson

... covering the Emperor with shame, and strewing both land and sea with the wrecks of his great armament. But six years before, he had conducted a most splendid and successful expedition against Tunis, then occupied by Heyradin Barbarossa, a valiant corsair and a prosperous usurper. Barbarossa had an irregular force of fifty thousand men; the Emperor had a veteran army, but not acclimatized, and not much above one half as numerous. Things tended, therefore, strongly to an equilibrium. Such were the circumstances—such ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... Pelican through the ice-floes of Hudson Straits. He was attacked by three English merchantmen, with one hundred and twenty guns against his forty-four. One of the English ships escaped, one Iberville sank with all on board, one he captured. That autumn the hardy corsair was in France with a great booty from the furs which the English ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong

... attention to the absence of Bettina or the return of the cashier's wife. At the beginning of 1827 the newspapers rang with the trial of Charles d'Estourny, who was found guilty of cheating at cards. The young corsair escaped into foreign parts without taking thought of Mademoiselle Mignon, who was of little value to him since the failure of the bank. Bettina heard of his infamous desertion and of her father's ruin almost at the same time. She returned home struck by death, and wasted away in a short ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... HORUK, a native of Mitylene; turned corsair; became sovereign of Algiers by the murder of Selim the emir, who had adopted him as an ally against Spain; was defeated twice by the Spanish general Gomarez ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Mohammed firmly. "That would-be simple Grec sailor, as he represented himself to you, was no one else than Demetri Pedrovanto, better known in the Aegean Sea, as 'The Corsair of Chios.' There's a price of ten thousand piastres on his head. Mashallah! How he dares show himself in Beyrout, amongst the enemy he has plundered, I know not. However, kismet! 'tis ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... with difficulty empty-handed. The vessel itself being signaled, is besieged. "In all the municipalities on the banks of the river drums beat incessantly to warn the population to be on their guard. The appearance of an Algerian or Tripolitan corsair on the shores of the Adriatic would cause less excitement. One of the seamen of the vessel published a statement that the trunks of the priests transported were full of every kind of arms." and the country people constantly imagine that they ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... thief, robber, homo triumliterarum [Lat.], pilferer, rifler, filcher^, plagiarist. spoiler, depredator, pillager, marauder; harpy, shark [Slang], land shark, falcon, mosstrooper^, bushranger^, Bedouin^, brigand, freebooter, bandit, thug, dacoit^; pirate, corsair, viking, Paul Jones^, buccaneer, buccanier^; piqueerer^, pickeerer^; rover, ranger, privateer, filibuster; rapparee^, wrecker, picaroon^; smuggler, poacher; abductor, badger [Slang], bunko man, cattle thief, chor^, contrabandist^, crook, hawk, holdup ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... demanded more. The other Barbary powers threatened to make common cause with him. Anticipating trouble, Jefferson had sent a small squadron to the Mediterranean even before the dramatic act of the Pasha at the American consulate; and hostilities began on August 1 with the capture of a corsair by the schooner Enterprise. Therewith Jefferson's dreams of a navy for coast defense only ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson

... of roses on the night when first we met; and the one who related that we met, 'twas in a crowd, and I thought he would shun me; he came, I could not breathe, for his eye was upon me, and concluded that 'twas thou that had caused me this anguish, my mother. There was the gallant corsair, too, just stepping out of a boat, waving his hat. His curly hair, open shirt collar, and black tie with flying ends remain in my mind, intimately associated with Byron, young love, some who never smiled again, the sapphire night, crisp, clear, cold, thick-strewn with stars, all ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... 'board the Corsair bound for Rio, and has been there ever since. I told you that before. There weren't no necessity for her to ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... Bombay, in the kingdom of Decan, a small island, with a very convenient harbour, above five-and-forty leagues to the south of Surat. The town is very populous; but the soil is barren, and the climate unhealthy; and the commerce was rendered very precarious by the neighbourhood of the famous corsair Angria, until his port of Geria was taken, and his fortifications demolished. The English company likewise carry on some traffic at Dabul, about forty leagues further to the south, in the province of Cuncan. In the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... glad to find you at last. I have been hunting up and down along the cliffs for the last hour or more, till I began to fear that you must have been carried off by a Barbary corsair, or spirited away on the ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... l'Estorades, that is all. You will be buried in the provinces. Are these the promises we made each other? Were I you, I would sooner set off to the Hyeres islands in a caique, on the chance of being captured by an Algerian corsair and sold to the Grand Turk. Then I should be a Sultana some day, and wouldn't I make a stir in the harem while I ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... denying himself nothing, and receiving everything-adulation, friendship, and unstinted love. Darkly mysterious stories of his adventures in the East made many think that he was the hero of some of his own poems, such as "The Giaour" and "The Corsair." A German wrote of him that "he was positively besieged by women." From the humblest maid-servants up to ladies of high rank, he had only to throw his handkerchief to make a conquest. Some women did not even ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... protected them, and after floating at sea for seven days they were picked up by a Corsair. He was so struck by their beauty that he altered his course, and took them home to his wife, who had no children. She was transported with joy when he placed them in her hands. They admired together the wonderful stars, the chains of gold that ...
— The Song of Sixpence - Picture Book • Walter Crane

... while to treat of it at some length. Moreover, the lives of few captains of adventure offer matter more rich in picturesque details and more illustrative of their times than that of Gian Giacomo de' Medici, the Larian corsair, long known and still remembered as Il Medeghino. He was born in Milan in 1498, at the beginning of that darkest and most disastrous period of Italian history, when the old fabric of social and political existence went to ruin under ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... offering with any violent acclamations of applause, that his name became suddenly that of a great unknown, that literary cliques talked about him to the exclusion of other topics, or that he rose famous one morning as Byron did after the publication of the 'Corsair,' nevertheless something was said in his praise. The Daily Delight, on the whole, was rather belittled by its grander brethren of the press; but a word or two was said here and there to exempt Charley's fictions from ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... were singing, dancing, feasting. It was a day such as only a gallant corsair could have with his merry crew. The hours sped swiftly; and at dusk anchors were weighed, and the ship moved a few ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.

... our anchor is dragging in his mud, and the man who violates the proprieties, like our brave Portland brothers, when they jumped on board the first steamer they could reach, cut her cable, and bore down on the corsair, with a habeas corpus act that lodged twenty buccaneers ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... exact ransom by threatening to make their captives walk the plank. But to ransom a captive from pirates has always been held a humane and Christian act; and it would be absurd to charge the payer of the ransom with corrupting the virtue of the corsair. This, we seriously think, is a not unfair illustration of the relative position of Impey, Hastings, and the people of India. Whether it was right in Impey to demand or to accept a price for powers which, if they really belonged to him, he could not abdicate, which, if they did not belong ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... perish, was the president of the board of marine, soon afterwards mayor of the town, John Gutton, a rich merchant, whom the misfortunes of the times had wrenched away from his business to become a skilful admiral, an intrepid soldier, accustomed for years past to scour the seas as a corsair. "He had at his house," says a narrative of those days, "a great number of flags, which he used to show one after another, indicating the princes from whom he had taken them." When he was appointed mayor, he drew his poniard and threw ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the marshal, and assuming an air of great gravity, which would have become a Judge of the greatest dignity. There was never the faintest suggestion of a smile. He looked, indeed, like Byron's description of the Corsair:— ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... of the ancient port, his scarred doublet rusted by wind and brine, his old back bellied like a sail, the pirate is shaking his fist at the frigate that passes in the distance; and leaning over the tangle of tarred beams, as he used to on the nettings of his corsair ship, he predicts his race's eternal hatred for ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... buccaneer, freebooter, pirate, corsair, raider, burglar, footpad, highwayman, depredator, spoiler, despoiler, forager, pillager, plunderer, marauder, myrmimdon>. (With this group compare the Steal ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... without any orders by officers, generals, soldiers and commissaries; these are enormous, but cannot be estimated. The only approximate total which can be arrived at, is the authentic list of robberies which the Jacobin corsair, authorized by letters of marque, had already committed in December, 1798, outside of France, on public or on private parties; exactions in coin imposed in Belgium, Holland, Germany and Italy, amounting to 655 millions; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... of these merchant still and Corsair sell A large supply, and most of those most fair. Reckoning one slain a-day, you thus may well Compute what wives and maids have perished there. But if compassion in your bosom dwell, Nor you to Love an utter rebel are, Be you contented with this band ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... by a corsair of immense strength and size, rigging cut, masts in danger of coming by the board, four foot water in the hold, men dropping off very fast; in this dreadful situation how do you think the Captain acts (whose name shall ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith



Words linked to "Corsair" :   pirate ship, Barbarossa, buccaneer, Khayr ad-Din, sea rover, sea robber, pirate



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