A free-booter, a marauder.
1835. Don’t mean to offend, Hercules, far from it. But really, when I spoke, your face did wear a most Blifustier expression, such an one as Black Beard himself might have put on while sacking a merchant-man, and sending her crew on the plank. (Note.) Blifustier was one of the names conferred by the Dutch, by which the early bucaniers of America were known…. A good wind, sir, would carry this Blifustier beyond the fort, before three guns could be brought to bear upon her.—W. G. Simms, ‘The Yemassee,’ i. 137–8, 150 (N.Y.).
1855. Suppose a fillibusterer should come along.—Olympia (W.T.) Pioneer, Sept. 7.
1855. Judge Gayle had decided that the filibuster bark “Magnolia,” as well as the arms on board, were not forfeited to the U.S.—Weekly Oregonian, Sept. 15.
1857. “Wanted—a few filibusters.”—Heading of a paper in Harper’s Weekly, Jan. 10.
1857. It is reported that General Henningsen and General Walker have met at Savannah; and it is privately understood that a new Filibuster expedition against Nicaragua is on foot.—Id., Aug. 22.
1858. Her little foreign tongue persisted in disguising my name; her little brave heart was bent on fillibustering.—Knick. Mag., li. 174 (Feb.).
1860. Success always transforms the mere flybuster into a hero of the first magnitude.—Oregon Argus, Oct. 13.
1861. All filibuster leaders gave the promise to their men of land and slaves.—O. J. Victor, ‘The History … of the Southern Rebellion,’ i. 136.
1869. A party of filibusters from Zorah and Eshcol captured the place [Laish], and lived there in a free and easy way, worshiping gods of their own manufacture and stealing idols from their neighbors whenever they wore their own out.—Mark Twain, ‘The Innocents Abroad,’ chap. xlvi.
