Etymology: The ultimate source is certainly the Dutch vrijbuiter in Kilian vrij-bueter (see freebooter n.). It is not clear whether the 16th cent. English form flibutor, of which we have only one example, was taken from Dutch directly or through some foreign language. Late in the 18th cent. the French form flibustier was adopted into English, and continued to be used, with occasional variations of spelling, until after the middle of the nineteenth century. About 1850–54, the form filibuster, < Spanish filibustero, began to be employed as the designation of certain adventurers who at that time were active in the West Indies and Central America; and this has now superseded the earlier flibustier even with reference to the history of the 17th cent. The mutual relation of the forms is involved in obscurity. It is possible that the corruption of fri- into fli- may be due to the influence of the word fly-boat n. (Dutch vlieboot, whence French flibot, Spanish flibote); but against this it may be urged that in our first quot. the word seems to be applied to marauders on land. In French the form fribustier (which may be a corruption of English freebooter) occurs in Du Tertre Hist. des Ant-Isles (1667) III. 151; but flibustier is apparently first recorded in A. O. Oexmelin (Esquemeling) Hist. des Avanturiers (1686); this writer says that it comes from the English flibuster ‘corsair’; in the earlier ed. of the work in Dutch (1678) the word does not occur. It is possible on the one hand that the corrupt form of the Dutch word may be of English origin, and may have been taken into French from its use in the English colonies in the West Indies; or, on the other hand, that the French form arose in the European wars of the 16th cent., and is the immediate source of Garrard's flibutor. In any case the insertion of the s probably originated in French as a mere sign of vowel-length, though from the Dictionnaire de Trévoux we learn that the s was already pronounced in 1704. In the Dict. étymologique of Ménage (who died in 1692), s.v. flibot, the form flibutier occurs, with the explanation (doubtless erroneous) ‘celui qui gouverne un flibot’. The Spanish filibustero is presumably < French flibustier.

Etymology: < filibuster n.