Buccaneer is a term generally used as a synonym for ‘pirate’. This term was first applied to the group of people in 17th century from English, French, Dutch and Portuguese pirates who opposed the Spainards and attacked their ships in the Carribean Sea. The term buccaneer derives from the Arawak word (Caribbean dialect) buccan, a wooden frame for smoking meat. From this came the French word, boucane and hence the name boucanier for French hunters who used such frames to smoke meat (in Haiti and Dominican Republic) and later was anglicised by the English colonists to ‘buccaneer’.
