rooster

Etymology

Definitions

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

   An informer.

4. ›+ 6 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      A violent or disorderly person.

   2. 5

      A powerful, prideful, or pompous person.

   3. 6

      A man.

   4. 7

      A 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.
   5. 8

      Legislation 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.
   6. 9

      The tenth of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to…

      The tenth of the 12-year cycle of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar.

The neighborhood

• neighborroost
• neighborcock-a-doodle-doo