roost

• IPA^(key): /ɹuːst/

  • Audio (Southern England)

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• Rhymes: -uːst

From Middle English roste (“chicken's roost; perch”), from Old English hrōst (“wooden framework of a roof; roost”), from Proto-Germanic *hrōstaz (“wooden framework; grill”); see *raustijan.

Cognate with Dutch roest (“roost”), German Low German Rust (“roost”), German Rost (“grate; gridiron; grill”).

roost (plural roosts)

1. The place where a bird sleeps (usually its nest or a branch).
   • 1700, [John] Dryden, “The Cock and the Fox: Or, The Tale of the Nun’s Priest, from Chaucer”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:

     He clapp'd his wings upon his roost.

2. A group of birds roosting together.
3. A bedroom.
4. (Scotland) The inner roof of a cottage.

roost (third-person singular simple present roosts, present participle roosting, simple past and past participle roosted)

1. (intransitive, of birds or bats) To settle on a perch in order to sleep or rest.
2. (figurative) To spend the night.
   • 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian‎:

     The UPS package centre for central London, a brief walk from Kentish Town tube station, holds a below-ground bay in which 170 vans roost every night.

• the chickens come home to roost

From Old Norse róst.

roost (plural roosts)

1. (Shetland and Orkney) A tidal race.
   • 1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London, Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC:

     Sometimes the whole tract swung to one side, like the tail of a live serpent; sometimes, for a glimpse, it would all disappear and then boil up again. What it was I had no guess, which for the time increased my fear of it; but I now know it must have been the roost or tide race, which had carried me away so fast and tumbled me about so cruelly, and at last, as if tired of that play, had flung out me and the spare yard upon its landward margin.

roost (third-person singular simple present roosts, present participle roosting, simple past and past participle roosted)

1. Alternative form of roust

• Sorto, Toors, ostro, roots, rotos, stoor, toros, torso

From Old Irish rúsc, from Proto-Celtic *ruskos (compare Welsh rhisgl).

• IPA^(key): /ruːs/

roost m (genitive singular roost, plural roostyn)

1. peel, rind
2. bark

• neuroostit (“unbarked”)

roost (verbal noun roostey, past participle rooisht)

1. to strip, peel, hull, rind, unbark
2. to rob
3. to bare
4. to debunk
5. to rifle
6. to deprive

roost

1. Alternative form of roste (“roast”)