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Corsair   Listen
noun
Corsair  n.  
1.
A pirate; one who cruises about without authorization from any government, to seize booty on sea or land.
2.
A piratical vessel. "Barbary corsairs... infested the coast of the Mediterranean."
3.
(Zool.) A Californian market fish (Sebastichthys rosaceus).






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Corsair" Quotes from Famous Books



... be deplored that pirates should be able to 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... but still it was their pride, their love, their generosity, that occupied his imagination. They are bad men; he takes care to tell us so himself; but he has not the heart to make them act otherwise than as noble fellows while they are under his guidance. The Corsair, from his very name and profession, is a declared criminal; but this once said, the poet occupies himself and his reader with nothing but what is generous and heroic in Conrad. Byron had no disposition, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... where we cannot succeed by force, we must employ stratagem; and I intend to go on board and to inform them that the Sea Hawk is an Austrian ship-of-war, anxious to protect merchantmen from the attacks of the corsair Zappa, and to revenge herself on him for his capture of one of their brigs of war, of which they will have heard. If I find them unprepared and unsuspicious of us, we will at once run alongside and take possession; and, as I am anxious not to ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... 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 ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... "dictator" after the Roman manner, who should set up a religious republic. Serried closely together on land, they had a strange mixed following on the sea. Lair of heretics, or shelter of martyrs, La Rochelle was ready to protect the outlaw. The corsair, of course, would be a Protestant, actually armed perhaps by sour old Jeanne of Navarre—the ship he fell across, of course, Spanish. A real Spanish ship of war, gay, magnificent, was gliding even then, stealthily, through the distant haze; and nearer lay what there was of a French navy. Did ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... in Corsair fashion, the Greek philosophers and had disembowelled Plato, Aristotle and the rest of them, to his complete satisfaction, in a couple of months; at present he was up to the ears in psychology, and his talk bristled with phrases about the "function of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... that he had embezzled the treasure of Montezuma and Guatimotzin, and was answerable to the soldiers both for what he had appropriated to his own use, and for that which had been sent to Spain as a present to his majesty and had been captured by Florin the French corsair. A long list of other demands followed, on every one of which he was found liable, and his property was sold under executions for the payment. At this time likewise, Juan Suarez the brother of Donna Catalina, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... 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 wait for the handkerchief ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... April 1537, written by Gonzalo de Guzman to the Empress, furnishes us with some interesting details of the exploits of an anonymous French corsair in that year. In November 1536 this Frenchman had seized in the port of Chagre, on the Isthmus of Darien, a Spanish vessel laden with horses from San Domingo, had cast the cargo into the sea, put the crew on shore and sailed away with his prize. A month or two later he appeared ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... of Conrad, the corsair. When Conrad was taken captive by the Pacha Seyd, Medora sat day after day expecting his return, and feeling the heart-anguish of hope deferred. Still he returned not, and Medora died. In the mean time, Gulnare, the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... to Moore on the occasion of dedicating his "Corsair" to him, after saying that not only had his heroes been criticised, but that he had almost been made responsible for their acts as if they were personal to himself, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... Varennes at Avignon, Berwick's offer of an escort, and the Countess's dread of the Pyrenees, are all facts, as well as her embarkation in the Genoese tartane bound for Barcelona, and its capture by the Algerine corsair commanded by a Dutch renegade, who treated her well, and to ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Leghorn; Show where the dancing wavelets sport Round the gay vessels in the port, Those ships whose gilded lanterns gleam In the warm sun's refulgent beam; And whose broad pennants kiss the gale, Woo'd also by the spreading sail!— Now let this mortal's vision mark Amidst that scene the corsair's bark, Clearing the port with swan-like pride; Transparent make the black hull's side, And show the curtain'd cabin, where Of earth's fair daughters the most fair— Sits like an image of despair, Mortal, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... another pair. The very last bet made on the day I opened the book was that Queen Victoria would make Lord Salisbury a duke, that a certain gentleman known as S. S. could find his own door in St. James's Square, blindfold, from the club, and that Corsair would win the Derby. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... he headed the schooner directly for the piratical craft. By skilful manoeuvring, he secured such a position that either pirate, by firing upon him, was in danger of firing into his fellow corsair. This position he managed to maintain until nightfall, when he slipped away, and by daylight was snugly at anchor in ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... Mahmoud, "with a corsair who had captured him in a garden on the coast near Trapani, and along with him a damsel, whose name I never thought of asking, though the corsair often spoke to me in praise of her beauty. Ricardo remained hero some days with his master until ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... except that the votive offering from the Veientine spoil was sent to Delphi in a Roman vessel (360). The Antiates indeed continued to prosecute their commerce with armed vessels and thus, as occasion offered, to practise the trade of piracy also, and the "Tyrrhene corsair" Postumius, whom Timoleon captured about 415, may certainly have been an Antiate; but the Antiates were scarcely to be reckoned among the naval powers of that period, and, had they been so, the fact must from the attitude of Antium towards Rome have been anything but ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... the news on society was like the bursting of a dynamite cartridge before every individual. Linden capitulated! Linden married! It was incredible. And to whom had he struck the bold corsair flag which had so long been the terror of husbands? To Kaethe von Markwald, in whom nothing piquant could be discovered which would be likely specially to attract a blase man of the world! She was beautiful, certainly, but he had passed by ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... vivacity, character, and action: I mean to say you have not as yet exhibited these qualities. The hooks with which you have fished for praise in the ocean of literature have not been garnished with live bait, and none of us can get a bite without it. How few read 'Comus' who have the 'Corsair' by heart! Why? Because the former, which is almost dark with the excessive bright of its own glory, is deficient in human passions and emotions, while the latter possesses ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry

... left the island of Madeira with his six ships and arrived at the island of Gomera[320-3] the following Tuesday. At this island he found a French corsair with a French vessel and two large ships which the corsair had taken from the Castilians, and when the Frenchman saw the six vessels of the Admiral he left his anchors and one vessel and fled with the other vessel. The Admiral sent a ship after him ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... appointment that Guido de Labazarris, a royal officer, entered upon those duties, and was obeyed. He, with much prudence, valor, and tact, continued the conversion and pacification of the islands, and governed them, and Morga states that in his time there came the corsair Limahon from China, with seventy large ships and many men-at-arms, against Manila. He entered the city, and having killed the master of the camp Martin de Goiti, in his house, along with other Spaniards who were in it, he went against the fortress in which the Spaniards, who were few in number, ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... Reviewers" Byron becomes a peer Loneliness and melancholy; determines to travel Portugal; Spain Malta; Greece; Turkey Profanity of language in Byron's time "Childe Harold" Instant fame and popularity Consideration of the poem Marries Miss Milbanke; separation Genius and marriage "The Corsair;" "Bride of Abydos" Evil reputation; loss of public favor Byron leaves England forever Switzerland; the Shelleys; new poems Degrading life in Venice Wonderful labors amid dissipation The Countess Guiccioli Two sides to Byron's character His power and fertility ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... mother's side, of African extraction, a circumstance which perhaps accounts for the southern fervour of his imagination. His great-grandfather, Abraham Petrovitch Hannibal, was seized on the coast of Africa when eight years of age by a corsair, and carried a slave to Constantinople. The Russian Ambassador bought and presented him to Peter the Great who caused him to be baptized at Vilnius. Subsequently one of Hannibal's brothers made his way to Constantinople and thence to ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... of Dr. Antonio de Morga to the governor, in which he gives an account of all that happened in the expedition against the Dutch corsair, presented as soon as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various

... "Harold" is obviously, in its coolness and neatness and lightness, the work of one who was unwilling to dishevel himself in the cause of expression, who outlined his sensations reticently rather than effusively, and stood always a little apart. The "Corsair" overture has not the wild, rich balladry of that of the "Flying Dutchman," perhaps. But it is full of the clear and quivering light of the Mediterranean. It is, in the words of Hans von Buelow, "as terse as the report of a pistol." And it flies swiftly before a wind its own. The mob-scenes ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... sea, to be sure!" said Bob, his face all aglow with delight at gliding thus like Byron's corsair— "O'er the glad waters of ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson

... old corsair," E. J. T., is best known perhaps as the grim and grizzled pilot in Millais' great picture (now in the Tate) of the North-west Passage. Trelawny and Borrow are linked together as men whose mental powers were strong ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... in a small boat, no sooner was he upon the open sea than there came such a storm of wind and tumult of the waves, that the boat was upset and all were drowned—all except Nennella, who having had no share in the corsair's robberies, like his wife and children, escaped the danger; for just then a large enchanted fish, which was swimming about the boat, opened its huge throat and ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... the appearance of Regnard, the actor Baron, Moliere's favourite pupil, had given a lively play—L'Homme a bonne Fortune (1686). JEAN-FRANCOIS REGNARD (1655-1709) escaped from his corsair captors and slavery at Algiers, made his sorry company of knaves and fools acceptable by virtue of inexhaustible gaiety, bright fantasy, and the liveliest of comic styles. His Joueur (1696) is a scapegrace, possessed by the passion of gaming, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... the great prerogative Of British monarchs. Each invader bold, Dane and Norwegian, at a distance gazed, And disappointed, gnashed his teeth in vain. He scoured the seas, and to remotest shores With swelling sails the trembling corsair fled. 10 Rich commerce flourished; and with busy oars Dashed the resounding surge. Nor less at land His royal cares; wise, potent, gracious prince! His subjects from their cruel foes he saved, And from rapacious ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... corsair's bride," said Mr. Dutton, admiringly, "you are so indifferent to discomfort and danger. I can't fancy you shut up in a poky school-room, taking regular walks, and teaching Dr. Watts to ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... particularly when viewed by evening from the sea, promised a magnificent prospect. The girls, however, were so well pleased upon the bark, that they continually entreated my brother to go farther out upon the sea. Mustapha, however, yielded reluctantly, because a Corsair had been seen, for several days back, in ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... darkest nights, when even the sheen of the moon has been unavailable, for the express purpose of training the aerial navigators to discover their position from the different sounds reaching them from below. In other words, the corsair in the skies depends more upon compass and sound than upon compass and vision when operating after dark. The searchlights with which the Zeppelins are equipped are provided merely for illuminating a supposed position. They ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... As I told him he might just as well lanch right out on Jonesville creek as a corsair, "and I've always said," sez I, "that never would I live ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... Geoffrey agreed. "However, I see there are some thirty soldiers forward on their way to join one of the regiments in Naples, so we ought to be able to beat off any corsair that might ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... extreme effort; they had been brought within a few miles of sea of each other, but combine they could not. Now for the first time came to light the full superiority which the English gained from their corsair-like and bold method of war, and their alliance with the Dutch. It was seen that a sudden attack would suffice to break the whole combination in pieces: Queen Elizabeth was said to have herself devised ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... captured the Peruvian corsair Nereyda, 16, hove her guns and small arms overboard, and sent her into port. She made the island of San Gallan, looked into Callao, and thence went to the Gallipagos, getting every thing she wanted from her prizes. Then she went to Tumbez, and returned ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... their chubby little hands. In short, the temple was worthy of the divinities, one of whom was light-hearted and coquettish, the other proud and serious. Between them was the Marquis de Strozzi, in the rich habit of a Greek corsair—a character which his handsome, sinister face was well fitted to represent. His gloomy black eyes were fixed upon Laura, while his hands toyed with a silken cord that hung from the pillar against which ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... made frantic rushes to obtain the hand of one of the beauties of that small society. Those were the days in which you thought, that, when you grew up, it would be a very fine thing to be a pirate, bandit, or corsair, rather than a clergyman, barrister, or the like; even a cheerful outlaw like Robin Hood did not come up to your views; you would rather have been a man like Captain Kyd, stained with various crimes of extreme atrocity, which would entirely preclude the possibility of returning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... possess the "Overture to the Corsair" [By Berlioz] (and would not recommend it for performance), and the "Prelude to Tristan" Blow ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

... that all Ann Veronica's tact had been ineffectual to conceal from her aunt and father. Her usual dignified reserve had availed her nothing. One point was that she was to wear fancy dress in the likeness of a Corsair's bride, and the other was that she was to spend whatever vestiges of the night remained after the dance was over in London with the Widgett girls and a select party in "quite a decent little hotel" near ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... 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

... of me," and Lord Byron became a suitor for the hand of Miss Milbanke, a relative of Lady Melbourne. His proposal was not at first accepted, but a correspondence ensued between them, and in September, 1814, after the appearance of "The Corsair" and "Lara," they became formally affianced. I was much in his society at this time, and was filled with foreboding anxieties, which the unfortunate events that followed only too fully justified. At the end of December he set out for Seaham, the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... Ruffolo, grown poor, turneth corsair and being taken by the Genoese, is wrecked at sea, but saveth himself upon a coffer full of jewels of price and being entertained in Corfu by a woman, returneth ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... "fraicheur" upon the minor theatres, but at once to appear upon the "great boards;" so far evidencing a higher flight of imagination and enterprise than is usually found among the clique of her early associates, who may be characterized as that school of young ladies, who like the "Corsair" and Dunleary, and say, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... 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 was the position on each side: ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... insult showed upon what a hollow foundation this savage power rested. The army landed without opposition. In five days it swept before it in hopeless rout the wreck of the Algerine forces. In three weeks it breached and captured the corsair's strongholds. The history of the French occupation of Algeria is a tale of unceasing martial exploits, by which France has extended her empire six hundred miles along the shores of the Mediterranean, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... Captain Daniel, clasping his hands, "you will have no embarrassment because of me; there will be no risk of my being attacked if they see me under the protection of your guns. There is not a corsair who would dare even to approach me, seeing me so bravely accompanied. With all respect, sir, the wolves attack the lambs only when the dogs ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... Fianc'ee du Roi de Garbe? You had been in the tent of the Cham of Tartary, and in the harem of the Captain Pacha, and, during your navigation of the AEgean, were possibly fallen into the terrible power of a corsair. How could I suppose that so many despotic infidels would part with your charms? I never expected you again on Christian ground. I did not doubt your having a talisman to make people in love with you; but antitalismans are ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... since I have made this history my present task, it is fitting that I should here at the outset acknowledge my extreme indebtedness to those chronicles. Without them, indeed, it were impossible to reconstruct the life of that Cornish gentleman who became a renegade and a Barbary Corsair and might have become Basha of Algiers—or Argire, as his lordship terms it—but for certain matters which are to be ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... well in range, when ports flew open along the stranger's sides, guns were run out, and a heavy broadside splintered through the planks of the robber galley. It was a man-of-war, not a merchantman, that had run Blackbeard down. The war-ship closed and grappled with the corsair, but while the sailors were standing at the chains ready to leap aboard and complete the subjugation of the outlaws a mass of flame burst from the pirate ship, both vessels were hurled in fragments through the air, and a roar went ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... The corsair at first did not keep her course direct for the ship, but rowed once or twice round her, firing as she did so. Then, apparently satisfied that no great precaution need be observed with a feebly-manned ship in so great a strait as the Rose, they set up a wild ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty

... into a path peculiar to himself. The brotherhood of villains in Kenilworth, of knights in Ivanhoe, and of enthusiasts in Old Mortality are instances of this. This bearing of character and plot on each other is not often found in Byron's poems. The Corsair is intended for a remarkable personage. We pass by the inconsistencies of his character, considered by itself. The grand fault is that, whether it be natural or not, we are obliged to accept the author's word for the fidelity of his portrait. We are told, not shown, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... 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 end ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston

... 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

... vanished like stars before the morning sun; that the King cleaved to her with the strongest affection, and was not seen out of the Seraglio, where she was kept, for about a month. That she was taken captive, together with her mother, out of a vineyard, on the Coast of Circassia, by a Corsair of Hiram King of Tyre, and brought to Jerusalem. It is said, she was placed in the ninth Seraglio, to the east of Palmyra, which, in the Hebrew tongue, is called Tadmor; which, without farther particulars, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... large 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 are ...
— Trinity [Atomic Test] Site - The 50th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb • The National Atomic Museum

... a day's voyage from the coast of Spain. As they were breezing along with all sails set, over a moonlit sea, they saw a large ship appear in the distance. It turned out to be a French corsair from Rochelle out for plunder, for when it came closer it suddenly fired two guns that took terrible effect and wrecked their vessel. As the ship began to sink, they begged to be taken aboard the corsair, to which the captain was not averse. Once aboard they were told that if they had ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... "After being a corsair, and probably a pirate, he thought no more of spitting a Christian on his dagger than I did of spitting on the ground," continued Schinner. "So that was how the land lay. The old wretch had millions, and was hideous with the loss of an ear some pacha had cut off, and the want of an eye left ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... present horizon; they are highly interesting. A chain of distant mountains sweep round Gibraltar, bold peaked, well defined, and deeply indented; the most distinguishable points occasionally garnished with an old watch-tower to afford protection against a corsair. The mountains seemed like those of the first formation, liker, in other words, to the Highlands than those of the South of Scotland. The chains of hills in Barbary are of the same character, but more lofty and much more ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... syl.). In reality he is don Thomas d'Alburci, of Naples. The family were exiled from Naples for political reasons, and being shipwrecked were all parted. Valere was picked up by a Spanish captain, who adopted him; Mariane fell into the hands of a corsair, who kept her a captive for ten years, when she effected her escape; and Anselme wandered from place to place for ten years, when he settled in Paris, and intended to marry. At the expiration of sixteen years they all ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... 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 ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... from the efforts of Mustapha and Dragut, and an army quite as fierce and numerous as that which was baffled before Gibraltar, by similar courage and resolution. The sword of the last-named famous corsair (a most truculent little scimitar), thousands of pikes and halberts, little old cannons and wall-pieces, helmets and cuirasses, which the knights or their people wore, are trimly arranged against the wall, and, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to Havre the catastrophe of the failure had taken place, and society paid no further 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 ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... Constitution late in the spring of 1803. The ships of the squadron did not sail together. Bainbridge, with the frigate Philadelphia, first entered the Strait of Gibraltar, and found a Moorish corsair cruising for American prizes. He captured her and took her to Gibraltar. When Preble arrived he proceeded to Tangiers with the squadron, when the Emperor of Morocco declared that he had never authorized any depredations on American commerce. The affair ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... triumliterarum[obs3][Lat], pilferer, rifler, filcher[obs3], plagiarist. spoiler, depredator, pillager, marauder; harpy, shark*, land shark, falcon, mosstrooper[obs3], bushranger[obs3], Bedouin|!, brigand, freebooter, bandit, thug, dacoit[obs3]; pirate, corsair, viking, Paul Jones|!, buccaneer, buccanier|!; piqueerer|, pickeerer|; rover, ranger, privateer, filibuster; rapparee[obs3], wrecker, picaroon[obs3]; smuggler, poacher; abductor, badger*, bunko man, cattle thief, chor[obs3], contrabandist[obs3], crook, hawk, holdup man, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... 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 always ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy

... too, these fellows," the Mole explained to the Rat. "Make them up all by themselves, and act them afterwards. And very well they do it, too! They gave us a capital one last year, about a field-mouse who was captured at sea by a Barbary corsair, and made to row in a galley; and when he escaped and got home again, his lady-love had gone into a convent. Here, you! You were in it, I remember. Get ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... 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

... steel engraving as a type of Homo Sapiens—an honour which at that time commonly fell to Lord Byron. Indeed, with more hair and less collar, Gombauld would have been completely Byronic—more than Byronic, even, for Gombauld was of Provencal descent, a black-haired young corsair of thirty, with flashing teeth and luminous large dark eyes. Denis looked at him enviously. He was jealous of his talent: if only he wrote verse as well as Gombauld painted pictures! Still more, at the moment, he envied Gombauld his looks, his vitality, his easy ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... strong, active mind and persuasive tongue like that of Drew, was felt on this occasion, for he induced the Amusement Group to allow a portion of his favorite poem, Byron's "Corsair," to be acted. With pencil and scissors he went to work, cutting and slashing the "Corsair" with these ungodly weapons until I fear he could not, had he been in the flesh, have fought a ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... Sanuto, compares the kingdom of the Pope's faithful Armenians to one between the teeth of four fierce beasts, the Lion Tartar, the Panther Soldan, the Turkish Wolf, the Corsair Serpent. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... buccaneer, burglar, depredator, despoiler, footpad, filibuster, forager, desperado, corsair, freebooter, highwayman, picaroon, marauder, pillager, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... see more of the North Star, for it shows two cubits above the water. And you must know that from this kingdom of Melibar, and from another near it called Gozurat, there go forth every year more than a hundred corsair vessels on cruize. These pirates take with them their wives and children, and stay out the whole summer. Their method is to join in fleets of 20 or 30 of these pirate vessels together, and then they ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... when 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, By ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... its shores, touching first at Barcelona, for we were not then at war with Spain, and then at Marseilles, from which port we struck across for Sicily, intending to call at Palermo. But on the way there we fell in with a Barbary corsair. Our captain was a brave man, and determined to fight to the last, as he had a very valuable cargo on board. The fight began early in the morning, and the pirate tried at first to ram our ship with his sharp beak; ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... Benedictine named Haedo, who published a topography of Algeria in 1612. Haedo sets forth that a young Arab who had embraced Christianity and had been baptized with the name of Geronimo was captured by a Moorish corsair in 1569 and taken to Algiers. The Arabs endeavoured, to induce Geronimo to renounce Christianity, but as he steadfastly refused to do so he was condemned to death. Bound hand and foot he was thrown alive into ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... 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 ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson

... the resistance to the Moslem sea power was taken by Spain under Charles V. He had, as admiral of the navy, Andrea Doria, the Genoese, the ablest seaman on the Christian side. Early in his career he had captured a notorious corsair; later in the service of Spain, he defeated the Turks at Patras (at the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth), and again at the Dardanelles. These successes threatened Turkish supremacy on the Mediterranean, and Sultan Soliman ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott

... King's convenience by the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir G. Carteret, who had removed to the lower ward. S. Aubin, on the other horn of the bay, was the seat of the naval power; here lived the families of the officers of the corsair-squadron then constituting the Royal Navy. The rest of the King's following was billetted on farm-houses in the parishes nearest to the town. Yet, as a warning that all was not their own, four frigates and two line-of-battle ships, ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... am acquainted with the corsair, though the acquaintance was none of my seeking," returned the Jew, "for, as I said before, traders have dealings with many sorts of men; but I did not advise him to attack you, and I could ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... poems that 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 ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... cattle thieves and driers of beef who dwelt in the pirates' paradise of Tortuga and Hispaniola, and little was required in way of soul-alchemy to transform the boucanier into the lawless and sanguinary, though picturesque, corsair of that romantic age. The buccaneer was but a natural evolution from the peculiar conditions then obtaining. Where human society in the process of formation has not yet arrived at the necessity of law to restrain the lust and greed of its members; and where at the same time untold ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... on the 14th of January, 1675, in an attack by the boats of the fleet upon four corsair men o' war moored under the very guns of the castle and fort of Tripoli. The exploit was a successful one, the ships were all burned, and most of their crews slain. Another encounter with the fleet of Tripoli took place in ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... robbers, outlaws and pirates, which present in a dignified and romantic light thieves and murderers like Dick Turpin and Claude Duval. That is to say, they do precisely the same thing as Scott's 'Ivanhoe,' Scott's 'Rob Roy,' Scott's 'Lady of the Lake,' Byron's 'Corsair,' Wordsworth's 'Rob Roy's Grave,' Stevenson's 'Macaire,' Mr. Max Pemberton's 'Iron Pirate,' and a thousand more works distributed systematically as prizes and Christmas presents. Nobody imagines that an admiration of Locksley ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton

... privileges and little supervision, and among them were doubtless plenty of murderers and other malefactors—but hardly a second Pelagati. It is another matter, though by no means creditable, when ruined characters sheltered themselves in the cowl in order to escape the arm of the law, like the corsair whom Masuccio knew in a convent at Naples. What the real truth was with regard to Pope John XXIII in this respect, is ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... corsair their pilot was killed, and soon after a fierce storm blew them far off shore. Seeking to make the Loochoo Islands, they lost them through lack of a pilot, and were tossed about at the ocean's will for twenty-three days, when they made harbor on Tane, a small island of Japan lying south ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... genius. He plunged into all the dissipation of the city. But this period from 1811 to 1815 was also one of extraordinary intellectual fertility. In rapid succession he gave to the press poems and romances,—'The Giaour,' 'The Bride of Abydos,' 'The Corsair,' 'Lara,' the 'Hebrew Melodies,' 'The Siege of Corinth,' and 'Parisina.' Some of the 'Hebrew Melodies' are unequaled in lyric fire. The romances are all taking narratives, full of Oriental passion, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... while chasing a Barbary corsair, a Christian slave, who happened to be at the helm, ran the corsair on board the Dutch vice-admiral, and immediately he and other slaves took the opportunity of leaping on board to escape from slavery. The captain ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr

... brigand, ladrone, desperado, 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

... Augustine, Florida, was born at Aviles in Asturias on the 15th of February 1519. His family were gentry, and he was one of nineteen brothers and sisters. At the age of fourteen he ran away to sea, and was engaged till he was thirty in a life of adventure as a corsair. In 1549 during peace between France and Spain he was commissioned by the emperor Charles V. to clear the north coast of Spain and the Canaries of French pirates. In 1554 he was appointed captain-general of the "flota" or convoy which carried ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... of Africa had once been the granary of Carthage and Rome, cultivation had receded, and the corn-ship of antiquity had given place to the felucca of the corsair, preying upon the commerce of Europe. A few caravans, laden with a little ivory and gold-dust or a few packages of drugs and spices, crept across the Desert, and the slave-trade principally, if not alone, drew to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... 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 to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... The impatience of some for the perilous flight, The forc'd giggle of others, 'twixt pleasure and fright, That there came up—imagine, dear Doll, if you can— A fine sallow, sublime, sort of Werter-fac'd man, With mustaches that gave (what we read of so oft), The dear Corsair expression, half savage, half soft As Hyienas in love may be fancied to look, or A something between Abelard and old Bincher! Up he came, Doll, to me, and uncovering his head (Rather bald, but so warlike!) in bad English said, "Ah! my dear—if Ma'maelle vil be so very ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... the spirit of the sea was in their veins; whether building and rigging a ship, or sailing and fighting her, they could do everything that the most skilful seamen of the age could do. As was said half a century later of La Bourdonnais, himself a true corsair in spirit, their knowledge in mechanics rendered them capable of building a ship from the keel; their skill in navigation, of conducting her to any part of the globe; and their courage, of fighting against any equal force. ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph

... rendered himself formidable by land, he resolved to be equally powerful upon the sea. He equipped a corsair, with instructions to capture the vessels of all nations; and as Araucan is directly opposite the island of Santa Maria, where vessels put in for refreshment, after having doubled Cape Horn, his situation was well ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... seriousness. But fun shall be had with the aid of His Highness below. The madder the world, the madder the fun. And the mixing in it of another element, which it has to beguile us—romance—is not at all bad cookery. Poetic romance is delusion—a tale of a Corsair; a poet's brain, a bottle of gin, and a theatrical wardrobe. Comic romance is about us ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... de Clieu was a merchantman, and many were the trials that beset passengers and crew. Narrowly escaping capture by a corsair of Tunis, menaced by a violent tempest that threatened to annihilate them, they finally encountered a calm that proved more appalling than either. The supply of drinking water was well nigh exhausted, and what was left was rationed for the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... of Portugal, for having relieved and clothed the crews of their great galleys so as to enable them to return to Venice. These galleys were returning from Flanders, when they were encountered and taken by the famous corsair Columbus junior, who stripped their whole crews and turned them ashore ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... as my mother did. Sometimes I was lucky enough to find the same volume several days running, and to take up the subject where I had left it off; and thus I contrived to hurry through a great deal of "Childe Harold," "Lara," and the "Corsair"—a new world of wonders to me. They fed, those poems, both my health and my diseases; while they gave me, little of them as I could understand, a thousand new notions about scenery and man, a sense of poetic melody and luxuriance as yet utterly unknown. They chimed in with all my discontent, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... Moors, Berbers and Turks. It is hard to believe that up to a hundred years ago the Riverains—the inhabitants of all the Mediterranean littoral, in fact, from Gibraltar to Messina—were constantly in danger of corsair raids just as our American pioneer ancestors were of Indian raids. The lay of the land and the lack of a powerful suzerain state to defend them made the Riverains facile prey. Villefranche afforded ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... korespondi. Correspondence korespondado. Corridor koridoro. Corrode mordeti. Corrupt putrigi. Corrupt (bribe) subacxeti. Corrupt (vicious) malvirta. Corruption putro. Corsage korsajxo. Corsair korsaro. Corse malvivulo. Corset korseto. Cortege sekvantaro. Cossack Kozako. Cosmopolite kosmopolita. Cosmography kosmografio. Cost kosto. Costiveness mallakso. Costly multekosta. Costume kostumo. Cosy komforta. Cot liteto. Cottage dometo. Cotton (raw) kotono. Cotton ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... and directly opposite to the station occupied by the captain-general of the League, was the huge galley of Ali Pasha. The right of the armada was commanded by Mehemet Siroco, viceroy of Egypt, a circumspect as well as courageous leader; the left by Uluch Ali, dey of Algiers, the redoubtable corsair of the Mediterranean. Ali Pasha had experienced a similar difficulty with Don John, as several of his officers had strongly urged the inexpediency of engaging so formidable an armament as that of the allies. But Ali, like his rival, was young and ambitious. He had been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... they barely escape from Admiral Wager's fleet which fought a famous battle there in 1708. Even the name of Misson's ship, the Victoire; was undoubtedly familiar to Defoe as the vessel commanded by the famous French corsair, Cornil Saus.[6] So convincing is Defoe that although his hero is shown meeting a real freebooter, Captain Tew, ten years after Tew's death, Misson is still included ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe

... a Chinese corsair, attacks Manila. 47 He settles in Pangasinan; evacuates the Islands. 49 Rivalry of lay and Monastic authorities. Philip II.'s decree of Reforms. 51 Manila Cathedral founded. Mendicant friars. Archbishopric created. 55 ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... of the route; for we are informed that one of the adventures would have proved exceedingly profitable, had not their ships, on their return across the Caspian, with Persian raw silk, wrought silks of many kinds, galls, carpets, Indian spices, turquois stones, &c., been plundered by Corsair pirates, to the value of about 40,000l. The final abandonment of this route, in the eighteenth century, arose partly from the wars in Persia, but principally from the extension of India commerce, which being direct and ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... you will be disappointed. We can't afford to pay such prices, and the 'Corsair' has a smaller circulation ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... more childish form of amusement, and that was to tell the story of any novel or poem she had been lately reading. This was so successful that in this manner Mary related the stories of most of Shakespeare's plays; of Byron's Bride of Abydos, and Corsair; of Keats's Lamia; of Tennyson's Idylls; and of a heterogenous collection of poetry and romance, in all of which stories the old ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... with new and original images, additions to already existing types of poetic workmanship. It has been said that Byron could only represent himself under various disguises, that Childe Harold and The Corsair, Lara and Manfred and Don Juan, are variants of a single personality, the egotist who is at war with his fellows, the generous but nefarious sentimentalist who sins and suffers and yet is to be pitied for his suffering. None the less, with whatever ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various



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



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