i am sparticus: Where Do Pirates Come From?

Where Do Pirates Come From?

The word Pirate comes from the Latin word "Pirata", which in English means 'to attempt' and that is a pretty fair summary of piracy in all its history and forms; 'an attempt'. It's important to recognise at this point that the phrase 'an attempt' implies 'a great big failure'. All things described as attempts are failures, If someone succeeds at something you don't call it an attempt, you call it a success. And obviously if they made enough of an attempt to warrant mention that they attempted it then they must have failed fairly conclusively. So when you read "they made an attempt to do something" read "they tried their best and still failed, doesn't that suck".

Anyway.

Over the next few days we'll be exploring the history of Pirates, but as we do we'll note this recurring theme of attempting to do something and failing miserably. But as that famous story about the post-it notes^* goes, even failure can yadda-yadda-yadda etc... Whatever, stay tuned to iamsparticus.com as all this week we explore the history of Pirates. Yargh.

Pirates in popular art; note the poor diet responsible for scurvy and lack of manly beard growth.

Footnotes

* If you haven't heard the story of the creation of post-it notes then obviously you haven't been paying enough attention to any assemblies, church services, motivational seminars or business attitude books that you may have come across. Basically the story of the post-it note is that some man attempted to make super strong glue that never came unstuck but failed dramatically, instead he made a glue that was incredibly weak and could be un-stuck and re-stuck again and again. About to throw it away he realised that maybe this glue could have a use and oh joy of joys post-it notes were born. This proves that just because you do the opposite of what you attempted to do doesn't mean that your time has been wasted. Like if you got in your car and drove to Exeter when you meant to drive to Edinburgh. Or if you attempted to make a million and ended up owing debtors a million. Or if, oh good grief wasn't this meant to be about pirates? Why am I still writing? I should learn when to shut up.

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