Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A place where large numbers of rooks or certain seabirds or marine animals, such as penguins or seals, nest or breed.
- noun A colony of such animals.
- noun Informal A crowded and dilapidated tenement or area.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A place where rooks congregate to breed.
- noun The rooks that breed in a rookery, collectively.
- noun A place where birds or other animals resort in great numbers to breed.
- noun A cluster of mean tenements inhabited by people of the lowest class; a resort of thieves, tramps, ruffians, and the like.
- noun A brothel.
- noun A disturbance; a row.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The breeding place of a colony of rooks; also, the birds themselves.
- noun A breeding place of other gregarious birds, as of herons, penguins, etc.
- noun The breeding ground of seals, esp. of the fur seals.
- noun A dilapidated building with many rooms and occupants; a cluster of dilapidated or mean buildings.
- noun Low A brothel.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
colony ofbreeding birds or otheranimals . - noun A crowded
tenement . - noun UK a place where
criminals congregate, often an area of a town or city.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a breeding ground for gregarious birds (such as rooks)
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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Few things are so unmusical as the voices of rooks, yet a home with a rookery is a very peaceful place.
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The young take to the water early in the autumn and the rookery is deserted about that time, the last to leave being the old birds who stay behind to moult.
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When Adah learned that Alice and I had actually bought a place at last she fairly wept for joy, and she excitedly produced her creased and worn copy of "The National Architect" and besought us to remodel the old Schmittheimer "rookery" -- that is what she dared to call it -- into a villa!
The House An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice Eugene Field 1872
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They have this default expression, like they're expecting to hear any minute that a tanker has gone aground and spilled a half million tons of crude oil into a penguin rookery.
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They have this default expression, like they're expecting to hear any minute that a tanker has gone aground and spilled a half million tons of crude oil into a penguin rookery.
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They have this default expression, like they're expecting to hear any minute that a tanker has gone aground and spilled a half million tons of crude oil into a penguin rookery.
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It was called a rookery, one of many in London, but this was as foul a rookery as any the city could boast.
Sharpe's Regiment Cornwell, Bernard 1986
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Some were sent out to steal pieces of iron, brass, copper, and old junk; and these Hag Zogbaum would sell or give to the man who kept the junk-shop in Stanton street, known as the rookery at the corner.
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Another feature in connexion with the rookery is the presence of what may be called unattached bulls, which lie around at a little distance from the cows, and well apart, forming a regular ring through which any cow wishing to desert her pup or leave the rookery before the proper time has very little chance of passing, as one of these grips her firmly with his powerful flipper and stays her progress.
The Home of the Blizzard Being the Story of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914 Douglas Mawson 1920
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The site of their rookery is a stony flat about a hundred yards from the water, and here are collected between five and six thousand -- all that remain on the island.
The Home of the Blizzard Being the Story of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914 Douglas Mawson 1920
whichbe commented on the word rookery
State of confusion. (from Phrontistery)
May 23, 2008