rooster

noun

1. 1

   A male domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) or other gallinaceous bird.

   Their other dish […] contain'd a number of roast fowls—half a dozen, we suppose, & all roosters at this season no doubt.

   The produce of two hens and a cock, or rooster, as the Yankees term that bird.

   Chalk a circle for a rooster.

2. 2

   A bird or bat which roosts or is roosting.

   The more leisured flight of the roosters [sc. starlings] was in contrast to the steady procession of the migrants.

   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. 3

   figurativeAn informer.

4. 4

   figurativeA violent or disorderly person.

5. 5

   figurativeA powerful, prideful, or pompous person.

6. 6

   figurativeA man.

7. 7

   historicalA wild violet, when used in a children's game based on cockfighting.

   In April they played Hens and Roosters, yoking their wild white and blue violets to see which would get its head pulled off.

8. 8

   obsoleteLegislation solely devised to benefit the legislators proposing it.

   American demoralisation... has carried rooster into the halls of republican legislation, where it indicates a bill or proposed law which will remunerate the legislators.

Forms

plural

roosters