I sort of like the idea of referring to the Pirates as "former Somali fishermen".

Well the obvious solution is to turn the modern pirates' image comical and heroic. This calls for... musical theatre!

Long ago, and far away, some roughhouses, called pirates, took over treasure stolen by rich kings from native people in a isolated continent, and largely got away with it for some extended time. They even buried some of their loot in unmarked places and sometimes made cryptic maps to find it again. The victims of the pirates somehow never got the joke and almost never got their twice-stolen money back.

Authors romanticized the theft and murder (because the kings were bad guys), and made the loot into something to hunt for with the prospect of adventure and free wealth.

Meanwhile the bad guy kings loosed their formidable navies to scour the seas, sink the pirates boats, and hang the pirates - and were successful, enough.

Hollywood made the pirates into superheros and comedians. Costume parties and Halloween greatly benefited from a fun disguise to wear while talking like a pirate. [Waving swords and all]

Then the Global War on Terror interferred with the modern day version of an old practice that was still practiced - largely in south asian waters by quiet pirates. The GWOT has no sense of humor because it is ugly and cruel to have terrorists doing their thing.

Then the current bad guys, Moslems in the middle east, reinvorated the pirate trade, and people lost their sense of humor (because Kinda-Big Money ransoms were being demanded from Big Money people - who don't make jokes about Money being 'lost').

Then it turned out that sharpshooters instead of destoyer ships were a good counter to this plague. Asymetric met asymetric.

And people lived happily ever after.

"I'm trying to think of similar examples where people had to learn to feel differently about a word within a matter of days."

I suggest "maverick"

It's kind of like that Brady Bunch episode where Bobby Brady idolizes Jesse James, disillusioned only after speaking to a descendant of one of James' victims.

I think the word "Pirate" is sound enough to handle both meanings, the Johnny Depp cuddly one and the most-recent not-so.

Hm. Check Johann Hari's column in the Independent or Huffington Post before choosing the right words.

or check Charlie Brown's column on cultural fascination with pirates:
http://www.undiplomatic.net/2009/04/13/international-death-to-the-pirates-day/

Pirates then, Pirates now: not that different.

See Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea:Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700 - 1750 (1989).

I don't sympathize at all. They are pirates. They hijack vessels on the high seas and steal or ransom the cargo, killing or kidnapping the crew. That's as good an operating definition of piracy as one is liable to find. Replacing this perfectly functional word with the linguistically contorted compound phrase "maritime terrorists". Here the phrase is not only infelicitous but it is vague. They are not engaging in terrorism, they are engaging in piracy. Should (as Matt Yglesias points out) a group of palestinian terrorists capture an Israeli flagged vessel and hold the crew ransom for some political change in the West Bank, THAT is terrorism. An what do we mean to say when we attach the modifier "maritime"? Were the acts on 9/11 "airborne terrorism"? Was the 1993 WTC bombing an act of "subterranean terrorism"? If someone captured a boat and dragged it up the Nile would it be an act of "riverine terrorism"?

I agree with angler -- we're seeing a change in perception of the word, sure . . . but that change is a return to a former perception. That earlier perception is what led the Founding Fathers to single out this crime for special consideration. They felt it was important enough to specifically grant Congress the power to punish piracy (Article 1 sec. 8). And one of the first laws ever passed by Congress dealt with pirates. In many respects, the concepts of international law are rooted in dealing with the problems posed by piracy. And it wasn't just the Captain Kidds and Blackbeards running around the Carribean, either --- there's a reason that the Marine's song mentions "the shores of Tripoli" right off the bat.

So basically, this has been a worldwide problem for several hundred (or even several thousand) years, for most of which time nearly everyone had exactly the same reaction to the word that you claim we are just now adopting.

I've been following the increase in maritime piracy fairly close for about 7 years, and I have to say, I am glad this change is happening. It was very disconcerting and annoying to try to convey the seriousness of this growing epidemic over the course of the last decade only to have people respond with an "aye matie!"

Imagine if everyone's response to the Mumbai attacks was to make "Thank you, Come again!" Apu jokes.

What I haven't seen near enough of is any conversation about the root causes of current piracy. Like the narrative of terrorism, little attention is paid to why people become terrorists. What is happening in their lives and realities that provokes them to these actions. I have a hard time believing that they are doing it for kicks and grins, or even for purely crass reasons. There's more going on here.

The last comment is the key. Ezra has it backward -- it's not that pirate is or needs to now be a word of condemnation, when it wasn't before. It's the reverse. There was no linguistic marker in pirate to allow sympathy for them. But with maritime terrorist, there would be. Ezra suggested they were "hungry" -- always a reason to consider in their defense. The last poster is now searching for the reasons, other than cash on the barrelhead, that they might be doing this. I knew the word "pirate" couldn't last, precisely because it is simply pejorative.

I'm trying to think of similar examples where people had to learn to feel differently about a word within a matter of days.

I humbly offer:

401k.

Nylund, I believe you set up a false choice:

It was very disconcerting and annoying to try to convey the seriousness of this growing epidemic over the course of the last decade only to have people respond with an "aye matie!"

I believe myself capable of appreciating the seriousness of this growing problem, yet, simultaneously incapable of not declaring that this comment is rated, YAAARRRRR!!!!