PIRACY. Depredation without authority, or transgression of authority given, by despoiling beyond its warrant. Fixed domain, public revenue, and a certain form of government, are exempt from that character, therefore the Barbary States were not treated by Europe as such. The Court of Admiralty is empowered to grant warrants to commit any person for piracy, only on regular information upon oath. By common law, piracy consists in committing those acts of robbery and depredation upon the high seas, which, if committed on land, would have amounted to felony, and the pirate is deemed hostis humani generis.
PIRAGUA [Sp. per agua]. See [Pirogue].
PIRATE. A sea-robber, yet the word pirata has been formerly taken for a sea-captain. Also, an armed ship that roams the seas without any legal commission, and seizes or plunders every vessel she meets; their colours are said to be a black field with a skull, a battle-axe, and an hour-glass. (See [Prahu].)
PIRIE. An old term for a sudden gust of wind.
PIRLE. An archaic word signifying a brook or stream.
PIROGUE, or Piragua. A canoe formed from the trunk of a large tree, generally cedar or balsa wood. It was the native vessel which the Spaniards found in the Gulf of Mexico, and on the west coasts of South America; called also a dug-boat in North America.
PISCARY. A legal term for a fishery. Also, a right of fishing in the waters belonging to another person.
PISCES. The twelfth sign of the zodiac, which the sun enters about the 21st of February.
PISCIS AUSTRALIS. One of the ancient southern constellations, the lucida of which is Fomalhaut.
PISTOL. An old word for a swaggering rogue; hence Shakspeare's character in Henry V.