freebooting
noun, adjective, verb
freebooting is a noun meaning “Piracy or plundering” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-R-E-E-B-O-O-T-I-N-G, and it appears about once in every 62 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does freebooting mean?
noun
- 1
Piracy or plundering.
- 2
Software piracy, or stealing or unauthorized rehosting of digital content.
Oh those freebooters taking our videos! I'm sick of it. Freebooting, you know, it's a serious issue!
adjective
- 1
Engaged in piracy or plunder
verb
- 1
present participle and gerund of freeboot
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is freebooting?
Freebooting appears about once in every 62 million words in written English, the 246,401st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Freebooting in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense piracy or plundering:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| Spanish | piratería |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does freebooting come from?
From freebooter (“a type of pirate”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).