rooster - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Rooster

Rooster

From roost +‎ -er. In the regions where it is used, displaced cock through taboo avoidance.

Compare typologically Russian насе́дка (nasédka) (akin to наси́живать (nasíživatʹ), also akin to насе́ст (nasést)).

rooster (countable and uncountable, plural roosters)

  1. (Canada, US, Kent, Australia, New Zealand) A male domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) or other gallinaceous bird.
    • 1772 March 14, A.G. Winslow, Diary:
      Their other dish […] contain'd a number of roast fowls—half a dozen, we suppose, & all roosters at this season no doubt.
    • 1836, Catharine Parr Traill, The Backwoods of Canada, page 308:
      The produce of two hens and a cock, or rooster, as the Yankees term that bird.
  2. A bird or bat which roosts or is roosting.
    • 1949, British Birds, 42, p. 323:
      The more leisured flight of the roosters [sc. starlings] was in contrast to the steady procession of the migrants.
    • 1999, Milton W. Weller, Wetland Birds: Habitat Resources and Conservation Implications:
      Ground roosters like Northern Harriers may be subject to predation by Great-horned Owls […] but still larger perchers like herons and Ospreys use snags or posts in conspicuous places but are large enough to escape aerial predators.
  3. (figuratively, obsolete slang) An informer.
  4. (figuratively, obsolete slang) A violent or disorderly person.
  5. (figuratively) A powerful, prideful, or pompous person.
  6. (figuratively, originally US slang, now chiefly New Zealand) A man.
  7. (regional US, historical) A wild violet, when used in a children's game based on cockfighting.
    • 1946, Conrad Richter, The Fields, page 231:
      In April they played Hens and Roosters, yoking their wild white and blue violets to see which would get its head pulled off.
  8. (obsolete, US, slang, uncountable) Legislation solely devised to benefit the legislators proposing it.
    • 1869 July, Southern Review, page 54:
      American demoralisation... has carried rooster into the halls of republican legislation, where it indicates a bill or proposed law which will remunerate the legislators.

male chicken; male gallinaceous bird

From Middle Dutch rooster, derived from the verb roosten.

rooster n or m (plural roosters, diminutive roostertje n)

  1. grill, grid a metallic maze-structure; some things containing one
  2. a device for roasting
  3. roster, timetable
  4. (crystallographic) lattice

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

rooster

  1. inflection of roosteren:
    1. first-person singular present indicative
    2. (in case of inversion) second-person singular present indicative
    3. imperative

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