Literary Pirate (Noun)
Meaning
Someone who uses another person's words or ideas as if they were his own.
Classification
Nouns denoting people.
Examples
- The professor accused the student of being a literary pirate after discovering that his essay was largely composed of passages lifted from a published article without proper citation.
- The blogger was exposed as a literary pirate when readers noticed that she had been passing off someone else's writing as her own for months.
- The company fired the writer after discovering that he was a literary pirate who had been submitting others' work as his own for years.
- The literary pirate was caught when he submitted a manuscript that was nearly identical to a published novel, with only minor changes to the original text.
- The academic community shunned the scholar after it was revealed that he was a literary pirate who had built his career on the ideas and research of others.