Brigander

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who operates as a bandit or belongs to an organized group of robbers and outlaws
2. An outlaw or robber who travels in company with others to commit theft and violence
3. A criminal who travels with an organized group to rob and plunder others

Etymology: "Brigander" is an archaic English word for a brigand, a robber or bandit, and its history runs through a chain of spellings that shifted over the centuries. It comes from Middle English "brigaunt" and "bregaund," the older forms from which the word was built. Those earlier spellings show the same sense of a fighting man or soldier who lived by plunder, a meaning that the word kept long before it settled into the plain sense of an outlaw. The "-er" ending in "brigander" suggests that English speakers reshaped the word so it looked like a person-noun, much as they did with other borrowings. The result was a form that sat alongside "brigand" for a time before the shorter spelling won out in general use.