December 4, 1996

rook

What is the origin of "getting rooked"? It's usually used now in the sense of cheated or unjustly excluded--even "gypped." Does it come from chess? birds?

Birds. The rook is a type of crow common in Europe. (This is off the subject, I know, but I just want to share my favorite rook-related quote: "Light thickens, and the crow/Makes wing to th' rooky wood."--Macbeth III ii 51. Sorry.) Like the crow, the rook has a reputation for being a not especially pleasant bird--it steals things, it makes a lot of noise--and the word rook became used as a term of opprobrium by around 1500 in England. Compare the use of ass 'a stubborn or foolish person', taken from the name of the animal.

By the late sixteenth century, another sense had developed, picking up the idea of crows' thievery: 'a cheat or a swindler, esp. at cards or dice'. This word underwent a functional shift to a verb, meaning 'to cheat or swindle'. The verb, which also appears in the late sixteenth century, originally referred to cheating at cards or dice, but then broadened to refer to cheating or swindling by any means.

The word rook that means 'a bird of the crow family' comes from an Old English word that stems from a Germanic root; cognates are found in several of the Germanic languages. It is unrelated to the word rook meaning 'a chess piece that can move any number of unobstructed squares horizontally or vertically', which comes from Persian, by way of Arabic and Middle French.