Roncher (or Rouncher), subs. (American).—Anything of exceptional size or quality. Rook, subs. (old).—1. A cheat: spec. gaming: also ROOKER: cf. sense 2 and pigeon. Hence rookery (or roking) = swindling; ROOKY (or ROOKISH) = rascally, scampish; as verb. = to cheat, to swindle (B.E., Dyche, Grose, Vaux, Bee). Hence rookery = (1) a gambling hell; and (2) any place of ill repute: e.g., (a) a brothel, (b) subalterns' barrack quarters, and (c) a neighbourhood occupied by a criminal or squalid population, a slum (q.v.).
1590. Sir Thomas More [Shakspeare Soc.] [Oliphant. New Eng., ii. 8. There are the new verbs rooke (plunder) and sharke (prey) . . .].
1603. Dekker, Wonderful Year [Grosart, Works, i. 89]. Rookes, catch-*polls of poesy, That feed upon the fallings of hye wit.
1609. Jonson, Epicœne, i. 1. Such a rook . . . that will betray his mistress to be seen.
1641. Milton, Ref. in England, i. A band of rooking officials. Ibid., ii. The Butcherly execution of Tormentors, Rooks and Rakeshames sold to lucre.
1672. Wycherley, Love in a Wood, iii. 4. I dare no more venture myself with her alone, than a cully that has been bit dares venture himself in a tavern with an old rook.
d. 1697. Aubrey, Lives, 'Sir J. Denham.' He was much rooked by gamesters.
1705. Ward, Hud. Rediv., 1. ix. 22. For like a Rook at Gaming-Table . . . he . . . cheats all sides with equal zeal.
1748. Smollett, Rod. Random, xlviii. He would not lend him money to squander away upon rooks. Ibid. (1751), Peregrine Pickle, lxxxviii. Having lost a few loose hundreds in his progress through the various rookeries of the place.
1760. Lucas, Gamesters, 125. Rooks are grown of late so intolerably Rude and Insolent.
1821. Egan, Life in London, 11. iii. Guv'nur, how long are ve to be kept in this here rookery, before you give us a sight of this phenomony?
1836. Dickens, Sketches by Boz, 105. That classical spot adjoining the brewery at the bottom of Tottenham-court-road, best known to the initiated as the Rookery.
1840. Thackeray, Captain ROOK and Mr. Pigeon [Title].
1869. Gent. Mag., July, 231. No opportunity of pigeon-plucking is lost by the majority of [billiard] markers . . . still he is not the worst form of rook.
1883. Sat. Review, 31 March, 398, 1. The registered lodging-houses are more decent than the old rookeries, but the people who live in the new buildings differ little, if at all, from those who lived in the old.
1884. Spencer, Man v. State, 54. The misery, the disease, the mortality of ROOKERIES.
2. (old).—A simpleton; a pigeon (q.v.). [One fit for rooking: see sense 1].
1596. Jonson, Every Man in His Humour, i. 1. Hang him, rook! he! why he has no more judgment than a malt horse. Ibid. (1599), Every Man Out of His Humour, i. 1. A tame rooke, you'l take him presently. Ibid. (1602), Poetaster, i. 1. What? shall I have my son a Stager now? an Enghle for Players? a Gull? a Rooke? a Shot-clog? to make suppers, and bee laught at?
1607. Dekker, Westward Ho, v. 1. Let's be wise, and make rooks of them that, I warrant, are now setting purse-nets to conycatch us.
1611. Chapman, May-Day, iii. An arrant rook, by this light, a capable cheating stock; a man may carry him up and down by the ears like a pipkin.
3. (common).—A clergyman: see Skypilot: Fr. corbeau.
4. (tailors').—A sloven.
5. (thieves').—A housebreaker's jemmy (q.v.); a crow (q.v.).—Grose.
