rooster

name

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

noun

Etymology: From roost + -er. In the regions where it is used, displaced cock through taboo avoidance. Compare typologically Russian насе́дка (nasédka) (akin to наси́живать (nasíživatʹ), also akin to насе́ст (nasést)).

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.”

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. An informer.
4. A violent or disorderly person.
5. A powerful, prideful, or pompous person.
6. A man.
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.”

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.”