rover

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɹəʊvə(ɹ)/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɹoʊvɚ/
• Rhymes: -əʊvə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: ro‧ver

From Middle English roven (“to wander, to shoot an arrow randomly”) +‎ -er.

Mars rover
(Image Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)

rover (plural rovers)

1. (archery, usually in the plural) A randomly selected target.
   • 1890, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 22, in The White Company‎:

     "By my hilt! no. There was little Robby Withstaff, and Andrew Salblaster, and Wat Alspaye, who broke the neck of the German. Mon Dieu! what men they were! Take them how you would, at long butts or short, hoyles, rounds, or rovers, better bowmen never twirled a shaft over their thumb-nails.

2. One who roves, a wanderer, a nomad.
   • 1846, Herman Melville, chapter 1, in Typee‎:

     But these islands, undisturbed for years, relapsed into their previous obscurity; and it is only recently that anything has been known concerning them. Once in the course of a half century, to be sure, some adventurous rover would break in upon their peaceful repose. and astonished at the unusual scene, would be almost tempted to claim the merit of a new discovery.

   • 1902, John Masefield, Sea Fever:

     I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
     To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
     And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
     And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

3. A vagabond, a tramp, an unsteady, restless person, one who by habit doesn't settle down or marry.

   She is a rover and dislikes any sort of ties, physical or emotional.

   • 1954, Pat Ballard (lyrics and music), “Mr. Sandman”:

     Give him the word, that I'm not a rover, and tell him that his lonely days are over.

4. A vehicle for exploring extraterrestrial bodies.
   • September 19, 2005, Dave Lane, Mars Exploration Rover "OPPORTUNITY"

     NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is currently traveling southward over a pavement of outcrop dubbed the "Erebus Highway." "Erebus Crater," the rover's next target, lies less than 100 meters (328 feet) south of its current position

5. A remotely-operated vehicle; ROV
6. (Australian Rules football) A position that is one of three of a team's followers, who follow the ball around the ground. Formerly a position for short players, rovers in professional leagues are frequently over 183 cm (6').
7. (American football) A defensive back position whose coverage responsibilities are a hybrid of those of a cornerback, safety and linebacker.
   • 2011, Frank Beamer, Always a Hokie: Players, Coaches, and Fans Share Their Passion for Virginia Tech Football‎:

     I went to Coach Beamer and, because we had a lot of outside linebackers, ask him if I could play rover.

8. (croquet) A ball which has passed through all the hoops and would go out if it hit the stake but is continued in play; also, the player of such a ball.
9. (baseball) The tenth defensive player in slow-pitch softball.
10. (obsolete) A sort of arrow.
    • 1600 (first performance), Beniamin Ionson [i.e., Ben Jonson], “Cynthias Reuels, or The Fountayne of Selfe-Loue. […]”, in The Workes of Beniamin Ionson (First Folio), London: […] Will[iam] Stansby, published 1616, →OCLC:

      All sorts, flights, rovers, and butt shafts.

From Middle Dutch roven (“to rob”). Cognate with Danish and Norwegian røver (“robber, thief, highwayman, brigand”), Swedish rövare, German Räuber. Compare the native English word reaver, which is ultimately the same composition.

rover (plural rovers)

1. A pirate.
   • 1603, Plutarch, “That Vice Alone is Sufficient to Make a Man Wretched”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Philosophie, Commonlie Called, The Morals […], London: […] Arnold Hatfield, →OCLC, page 299:

     Diogenes will deſpiſe thee for all that, who being expoſed and offered to ſale by the rovers and theeves that tooke him, cried and proclaimed himſelfe aloud: Who will buy a maſter who?

2. A pirate ship.
   • 1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC:

     The first was this: our ship making her course towards the Canary Islands, or rather between those islands and the African shore, was surprised in the grey of the morning by a Turkish rover of Sallee, who gave chase to us with all the sail she could make.

From Middle Dutch rôvere. Equivalent to roven +‎ -er.

• IPA^(key): /ˈroː.vər/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: ro‧ver
• Rhymes: -oːvər

rover m (plural rovers, diminutive rovertje n)

1. robber

• roversbende
• rovershol
• roversnest
• straatrover
• struikrover
• zeerover (“pirate”)

• roof

• Afrikaans: rower

• vrore

• ruver

First known attestation 881 in The Sequence of Saint Eulalia. From Latin rogāre, present active infinitive of rogō. The forms in -uis- was very likely due to analogy with forms of pooir.

rover

1. to order (give an order)

This verb conjugates as a first-group verb ending in -er. The forms that would normally end in *-v, *-vs, *-vt are modified to f, s, t. This verb has a stressed present stem ruev distinct from the unstressed stem rov, as well as other irregularities. Old French conjugation varies significantly by date and by region. The following conjugation should be treated as a guide.

• rovaison