We Have Different Words Because They Refer to Different Concepts
By We should stop calling them pirates and start calling them something like “maritime terrorists,” to end any remaining romanticization.
It would be better if we simply thought about pirates in less romantic ways, rather than discarding the term altogether. To refer to them as “terrorists” in insulting to both pirates and terrorists; it’s relatively easy to distinguish between the two. It’s not 100% true that pirates are indifferent to politics and just in it for the money, and it’s not 100% true that terrorists are indifferent to money and just in it for the politics, and of course there will always be borderline cases, but this is a situation in which I’m pretty happy with the linguistic distinction we have.