Misunderstandings, colloquialisms, wrong words and false friends: 15

 

Did you see that man driving down the village main street at 160 kilometres an hour? What a pirate!

 

Unfortunately, from a British perspective, a lot of European drivers do drive… let’s say, not as safely as the British. But we do not call them pirates.

It does not matter where they come from. We do call bad drivers many things, with nouns and adjectives such as maniac, idiot, deranged, bonkers, stupid, lunatic, psycho, mindless, nuts, mental, crazy, irresponsible, total nutcase, off their rocker, and many many more, with some examples I could not possibly have printed here.
 

But the definition of a pirate is either a sailor who attacks other ships and steals property from them, or someone who makes copies of videos, CDs, books, computer programs, expensive watches, jeans and so on, and then selling them and keeping all the money.

 

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