Rookery
noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A colony of breeding birds or other animals.
"It was a rookery which had never been raided by the hunters, and in consequence the seals were mild-tempered and at the same time unafraid."
- 2 a breeding ground for gregarious birds (such as rooks) wordnet
- 3 A crowded tenement. broadly
"Lord John Roxton and I turned down Vigo Street together and through the dingy portals of the famous aristocratic rookery."
- 4 A place where criminals congregate, often an area of a town or city. British, broadly, historical
"The Flower and Dean St rookery had been home to many of those who lived at least partly by street crime."
- 5 That part of the barracks occupied by subalterns. obsolete, slang
Example
More examples"Located at the northern end of the Ten Thousand Islands on the gulf coast of Florida, the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve represents one of the few remaining undisturbed mangrove estuaries in North America."
Etymology
From rook + -ery, 1725.
More for "rookery"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.