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  1. rook love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. An Old World bird (Corvus frugilegus) that resembles the North American crow and nests in colonies near the tops of trees.
  2. n. A swindler or cheat, especially at games.
  3. v. To swindle; cheat: Customers are afraid of being rooked by unscrupulous vendors.
  4. n. A chess piece that may move in a straight line over any number of empty squares in a rank or file. Also called castle.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. A kind of crow, Corvus frugilegus, abundant in Europe. It is entirely black, with the parts about the base of the bill more or less bare of feathers in the adult. The size is nearly or about that of the common crow; it is thus much smaller than the raven, and larger than the jackdaw. It is of a gregarious and sociable disposition, preferring to nest in rookeries about buildings, and feeding on insects and grain.
  2. n. The ruddy duck, Erismatura rubida.
  3. n. A cheat; a trickster or swindler; one who practises the “plucking of pigeons.” See pigeon, 2.
  4. n. A simpleton; a gull; one liable to be cheated.
  5. To caw or croak as a crow or raven.
  6. To cheat; defraud.
  7. To cheat; defraud by cheating.
  8. n. In chess, one of the four pieces placed on the corner squares of the board; a castle. The rook may move along the ranks or the files the whole extent of the board unless impeded by some other piece. See chess.
  9. Same as ruck.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A European bird, Corvus frugilegus, of the crow family.
  2. n. A swindler; someone who betrays.
  3. n. UK a type of firecracker used by farmers to scare birds of the same name.
  4. v. transitive To cheat or swindle.
  5. n. chess A piece shaped like a castle tower, that can be moved only up, down, left or right (but not diagonally) or in castling.
  6. n. rare A castle or other fortification.
  7. n. An Amish card game.
  8. n. baseball, slang A rookie.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. obsolete Mist; fog. See roke.
  2. v. obsolete To squat; to ruck.
  3. n. (Chess) One of the four pieces placed on the corner squares of the board; a castle.
  4. n. (Zoöl.) A European bird (Corvus frugilegus) resembling the crow, but smaller. It is black, with purple and violet reflections. The base of the beak and the region around it are covered with a rough, scabrous skin, which in old birds is whitish. It is gregarious in its habits. The name is also applied to related Asiatic species.
  5. n. A trickish, rapacious fellow; a cheat; a sharper.
  6. v. To cheat; to defraud by cheating.

WordNet 3.0

  1. v. deprive of by deceit
  2. n. common gregarious Old World bird about the size and color of the American crow
  3. n. (chess) the piece that can move any number of unoccupied squares in a direction parallel to the sides of the chessboard

Etymologies

  1. From rookie. (Wiktionary)
  2. Middle English rok, from Old English hrōc.Middle English rok, from Old French roc, from Arabic ruḫḫ, from Persian. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “I think the last white rook is behind the white king”

    EXTRALIFE – By Scott Johnson - Don’t play chess with this kid.

  • “The word rook comes from the Persian rukh, which means chariot.”

    and now it's time for world news...

  • “Today, the name of the 'ruhkh' lives on in western chess as the "rook" - although the piece was converted to a tower or "castle" in western terminology; and in northern India and Pakistan many men are named after the 'shah ruhkh' including famous Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan.”

    Archive 2008-12-01

  • “There is the study that showed how a Eurasian corvid called a rook figured out that it could raise the level of water in a pitcher by adding rocks to it, just like in the ancient Aesop fable, so it could get a drink.”

    The Huffington Post: David Mizejewski: Corvids Are Oddly Intelligent

  • “Chimpy: Listen, your rook was a threat, so I removed him.”

    Archive 2004-05-01

  • “Chimpy: Listen, I know in my heart your rook was a threat.”

    Archive 2004-05-01

  • “The most important problem however in connection with the rook is the precise extent to which the bird is the farmer's enemy or his friend.”

    Birds in the Calendar

  • “The rook is a villain, yet there is something irresistible in the effrontery with which one will hop sidelong on a gorging gull, which beats a hasty retreat before its sable rival, leaving some half-prized shellfish to be swallowed at sight or carried to the greedy little beaks in the tree-tops.”

    Birds in the Calendar

  • “They say the rook is a very long-lived bird, and I feel as if I could swear to the way they are cawing.”

    A Dark Night's Work

  • “POSITION OR MATERIALThere is one case which can be treated as positional or material, namely the rook's pawn, which differs from other pawns in that it can only capture one way instead of two.”

    RO.RSS

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synonyms (13)

Words with the same meaning

  1. mist
  2. squat
  1. ruck
  2. castle
  1. cheat
  2. sharper
  1. sway
  2. swindler
  1. con
  2. have
  1. do
  2. swindle
  1. dupe

hypernyms (5)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. corvine bird
  1. chessman
  1. chess piece
  1. bird
  1. firecracker

same context (12)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. magpie
  2. jackdaw
  1. pawn
  2. buzzard
  1. jackal
  2. jay
  1. cuckoo
  2. sparrow
  1. pvp
  2. thigh bone
  1. plover
  2. partridge

rhymes (38)

Words with the same terminal sound

  1. Brook
  2. Brooke
  3. Chinook
  4. Cook
  5. Cooke
  6. Crook
  7. Hooke
  1. Kirkuk
  2. book
  3. brook
  4. brooke
  5. chinook
  6. chook
  7. cook
  1. crook
  2. flook
  3. forsook
  4. gobbledygook
  5. gook
  6. hook
  7. look
  1. mistook
  2. mook
  3. nook
  4. overcook
  5. overtook
  6. precook
  7. rebook
  1. retook
  2. schnook
  3. shook
  4. snook
  5. took
  6. tooke
  7. unbook
  1. undercook
  2. undertook
  3. unhook

reverse dictionary (22)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. castle
  2. stool pigeon
  3. zules
  4. caw
  1. exchange
  2. valve-chamber
  3. blacky
  4. chess-rook
  1. QR
  2. KR
  3. R
  4. discovered check
  1. family corvidae
  2. castling
  3. corvidae
  4. blackleg
  1. carrion crow
  2. pebble
  3. pigeon
  4. spraying
  1. tiger' s-eye
  2. take

tags (4)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. cards
  1. game
  1. bird
  1. chess

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tagging (1)

Words tagged ‘rook’

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Lists

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Comments

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  • fbharjo from Middle English rok, from Middle French roc, from Arabic rukh, from Persian رخ rukh (=chess piece) Aug 31, 2009

  • winterstark A group of rooks is called "a parliament of rooks". Neil Gaiman explains why in his comic Sandman (#40):

    "You'll get a field. Empty. Suddenly, the sky is black with birds, and they fall like a ragged black rain onto a field, covering it completely. Or almost completely... in the center of the field, there's an empty space. And in the middle of that space sits one lone rook. It caws, and calls, and caws some more. Then thousand little eyes stare at it, unflinching. Sometimes they call out, as if they're asking questions. It's like a parliament. It's like a trial. The lone rook continues to caw and the others wait. This can go on for hours. From dawn till near dusk.

    Only one of two things could happen. Either the birds take wing as one, leaving the lone rook alone in the field...or, again as one, they fall on the bird, and peck it to death. Why? It's a mystery." May 23, 2009

  • frogapplause a piercing on the antihelix of the ear. May 22, 2009

  • dimã©lion "Like many other members of the Corvidae family, the rook features prominently in folklore. Traditionally, rooks are said to be able to forecast weather and to sense the approach of death. If a rookery — the colonial nesting area of rooks — were abandoned, it was said to bring bad fortune for the family that owned the land. Another folk-tale holds that rooks are responsible for escorting the souls of the virtuous dead to heaven. William Butler Yeats may be making reference to the latter tale in his poem The Cold Heaven."
    -Wikipedia. Nov 22, 2008

  • ofravens On the stiff twig up there
    Hunches a wet black rook
    Arranging and rearranging his feathers in the rain.
    from "Black Rook in Rainy Weather," Sylvia Plath Mar 26, 2008

  • treeseed Rook is a trick-taking game, usually played with a specialized deck of cards. Sometimes referred to as "Christian cards" or "missionary poker", Rook playing cards were introduced by Parker Brothers in 1906 to provide an alternative to standard playing cards for those in the Puritan tradition who considered the face cards in a regular deck inappropriate because of their association with gambling and cartomancy.
    _Wikipedia Jan 27, 2008

  • vanishedone However, there is a move called castling, involving the rook. Nov 30, 2007

  • seanahan The chess piece is called a rook, not a castle. Feb 20, 2007

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‘rook’ has been looked up 3674 times, loved by 4 people, added to 41 lists, commented on 8 times, and has a Scrabble score of 8.