Roost Meaning
/ɹuːst/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounThe place where a bird sleeps (usually its nest or a branch).
nounA group of birds roosting together.
Sentence Examples
Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.
At home it is Liisa who rules the roost.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The farmer built a wooden ____ inside the chicken coop for the birds to sleep on.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The chickens returned to their ____ each evening as the sun began to set.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English roste (“chicken's roost; perch”), from Old English hrōst (“wooden framework of a roof; roost”), from Proto-West Germanic *hrōst, from Proto-Germanic *hrōstaz (“wooden framework; grill”); see *raustijan. Cognate with Dutch roest (“roost”), German Low German Rust (“roost”), German Rost (“grate; gridiron; grill”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"He clapp'd his wings upon his roost."
— 1700, [John] Dryden, “The Cock and the Fox: Or, The Tale of the Nun’s Priest, from Chaucer”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
"The UPS package centre for central London, a brief walk from Kentish Town tube station, holds a below-ground bay in which 170 vans roost every night."
— 2019 November 21, Samanth Subramanian, “How our home delivery habit reshaped the world”, in The Guardian:
"Sometimes the whole tract swung to one side, like the tail of a live serpent; sometimes, for a glimpse, it would all disappear and then boil up again. What it was I had no guess, which for the time increased my fear of it; but I now know it must have been the roost or tide race, which had carried me away so fast and tumbled me about so cruelly, and at last, as if tired of that play, had flung out me and the spare yard upon its landward margin."
— 1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC:
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CEFR Practice Quiz
The farmer built a wooden ____ inside the chicken coop for the birds to sleep on.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The chickens returned to their ____ each evening as the sun began to set.