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rook

nounverbnounnounnounverbverbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ɹɵk//
  • Australia//ɹʊk//
  • Scotland//ɾʉk//
  • //ɹuːk//
  • //ɻʉk//

A European bird, Corvus frugilegus, of the crow family.

noun

  1. 1

    A European bird, Corvus frugilegus, of the crow family.

    To-night the winds begin to rise ⁠And roar from yonder dropping day: ⁠The last red leaf is whirl’d away, The rooks are blown about the skies; […]

  2. 2

    A cheat or swindler; someone who betrays.

    So I am (like an old rook, who is ruined by gaming) forced to live on the good fortune of the pushing young men, whose fancies are so vigorous that they ensure their success in their adventures with Muses, by their strength and imagination.

  3. 3

    A bad deal; a rip-off.

  4. 4

    A type of firecracker used by farmers to scare birds of the same name.

  5. 5

    A trick-taking game, usually played with a specialized deck of cards.

    Adventists still do not really know how to play cards, apart from the sanitized version of bridge, Rook.

  6. 6

    archaicA parson.

Etymology

* Inherited from Middle English rok, roke, from Old English hrōc, from Proto-West Germanic *hrōk, from Proto-Germanic *hrōkaz (compare Old Norse hrókr, Saterland Frisian Rouk, Dutch roek, obsolete German Ruch), from Proto-Indo-European *kerk- (“crow, raven”) (compare Old Irish cerc (“hen”), Old Prussian kerko (“loon, diver”), dialectal Bulgarian кро́кон (krókon, “raven”), Ancient Greek κόραξ (kórax, “crow”), Old Armenian ագռաւ (agṙaw), Avestan 𐬐𐬀𐬵𐬭𐬐𐬀𐬙𐬀𐬝 (kahrkatat̰, “rooster”), Sanskrit कृकर (kṛkara, “rooster”)), Ukrainian крук (kruk, “raven”). * (parson): Probably from the resemblance in plumage to a parson's garments.

verb

  1. 1

    To cheat or swindle.

    They rook one shockingly at these places.

    Some had spent a week in Jersey before coming to Guernsey; and, from what Paddy had heard, they really do know how to rook the visitors over there.

noun

  1. 1

    A piece shaped like a castle tower, that can be moved only up, down, left or right (but not diagonally) or in castling.

  2. 2

    rareA castle or other fortification.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English rook, rooke, roke, rok, from Old French roc, ultimately from Persian رخ (rox), from Middle Persian lhw' (rox, “rook, castle (chess)”). Compare roc.

noun

  1. 1

    slangA rookie.

Etymology

From rookie.

noun

  1. 1

    mist; fog; roke

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English roke, rock, rok (“mist; vapour; drizzle; smoke; fumes”), from Old Norse *rauk, related to Icelandic rok, roka (“whirlwind; seafoam; seaspray”), Middle Dutch rooc, rok, Modern Dutch rook (“smoke; fog”).

verb

  1. 1

    obsoleteTo squat; to ruck.

    The raven rook'd her on the chimney's top

verb

  1. 1

    Variant of lookPronunciation spelling of look, mimicking Asian speech.

Forms

plural
rooks
past tense
rooked
past participle
rooked
present participle
rooking
third person singular
rooks
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).