What does "privateering" mean?

The operations of a privateer, attacking and looting enemy ships under the auspices of one's own government.

What is a synonym for "privateering"?

Common synonyms include: letters of marque.

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
The operations of a privateer, attacking and looting enemy ships under the auspices of one's own government.
"The profit of privateerings is some small compensation to the merchants of Bourdeaux for the deficiency in the regular profits of commerce."

Verb

1
present participle and gerund of privateer form-of, gerund, participle, present

"The profit of privateerings is some small compensation to the merchants of Bourdeaux for the deficiency in the regular profits of commerce."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.