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roost
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
roost
I.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ VERB
rule
▪ The mid-fielders ruled the roost up to the interval, but after a scoreless first half the Antrim team showed great dominance.
▪ Alongside the State, they continued to rule the roost.
▪ But it was those two who ruled the roost.
▪ In the meantime, it was Amelia who ruled the family roost.
▪ The late 1960s and early 1970s saw Lee Trevino ruling the roost on both sides of the Pond.
▪ Effective discipline is neither harsh nor does it allow the child to rule the roost.
▪ I kind of ruled the roost a bit, but we got on well.
▪ Political expediency, political vengeance still rule the roost, not only in waterfowl jobs but throughout the establishment.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
rule the roost
▪ Amanda pretty much rules the roost in that house.
▪ Alongside the State, they continued to rule the roost.
▪ But it was those two who ruled the roost.
▪ But Mr Norman rules the roost in the film field with a regular 4 million audience, twice the weekly cinema audience.
▪ Effective discipline is neither harsh nor does it allow the child to rule the roost.
▪ I kind of ruled the roost a bit, but we got on well.
▪ Political expediency, political vengeance still rule the roost, not only in waterfowl jobs but throughout the establishment.
▪ The late 1960s and early 1970s saw Lee Trevino ruling the roost on both sides of the Pond.
▪ The mid-fielders ruled the roost up to the interval, but after a scoreless first half the Antrim team showed great dominance.
sb's chickens have come home to roost
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ All are roost sites except Salthouse, where there was a nest and the pellets collected came mainly from the nestlings.
▪ Alongside the State, they continued to rule the roost.
▪ As soon as the adventurers stop moving, the Harpies will swoop down from their roosts in the rock.
▪ In the meantime, it was Amelia who ruled the family roost.
▪ Table 2.2 Barn owl samples: nest site versus roost site.
▪ The mid-fielders ruled the roost up to the interval, but after a scoreless first half the Antrim team showed great dominance.
▪ The others do not return, presumably traveling on to another, more distant roost.
▪ The ravens had returned to their roost in the pines and were noisily getting settled when I got back.
II.verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
bird
▪ The soft twittering hum came from birds going to roost.
▪ Our laughter caused birds roosting in the garden to squawk and take flight.
▪ When birds roosted off the island young men competed to bring an egg back to their clan leader.
▪ These include a patented fumigation system, electronic fly killers and sonic systems which deter bird flocks from roosting on particular buildings.
▪ In the first method, sharpshooters would have used air rifles at night while the birds are roosting.
chicken
▪ Eventually, of course, the chickens came home to roost.
■ VERB
come
▪ All day the eye of the sky bulges, lidless and forgiving until darkness comes to roost undisturbed in its lashes.
▪ The lessons of what it meant to be the formal authority were coming home to roost.
▪ But, for the over extended borrowers, the chickens have come home to roost.
▪ Many traditionally fortean phenomena have since come to roost in the world of science.
▪ Vices, however, like curses, come back to roost.
▪ Eventually, of course, the chickens came home to roost.
▪ The pigeons are coming home to roost.
▪ Chickens had come home to roost.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
sb's chickens have come home to roost
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Bryan now has an estimated 50, 000 to 75, 000 egrets roosting in nine parts of town.
▪ Eventually, of course, the chickens came home to roost.
▪ From daytime feeding grounds up to twenty miles away, they converge on Abbey Park to roost for the night.
▪ Many traditionally fortean phenomena have since come to roost in the world of science.
▪ The chickens were free to roam this winter garden, although the sensible ones had gone to roost by now.
▪ The darkness of winter twilight was roosting on the land.
▪ The lessons of what it meant to be the formal authority were coming home to roost.
▪ They like roosting on telegraph poles.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
roost

Roust \Roust\, n. [Cf. Icel. r["o]st an estuary.] A strong tide or current, especially in a narrow channel. [Written also rost, and roost.]
--Jamieson.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
roost

late Old English hrost "wooden framework of a roof, perch for domestic fowl," from Proto-Germanic *hro(d)-st- (cognates: Old Saxon hrost "framework of a roof, attic," Middle Dutch, Flemish, Dutch roest "roost," Old Norse hrot, Gothic hrot "roof," of unknown origin. Exact relationship and ulterior connections unknown. Extended sense "hen-house" is from 1580s. To rule the roost is recorded from 1769.

roost

1520s, from roost (n.). Related: Roosted; roosting. Chickens come home to roost in reference to eventual consequences of bad actions attested from 1824; the original proverb seems to have been curses, like chickens, come home to roost.

Wiktionary
roost

Etymology 1 n. 1 The place where a bird sleeps (usually its nest or a branch). 2 A group of birds roosting together. vb. 1 (context of birds English) sleep. 2 to come back home Etymology 2

n. (context UK Shetland and Orkney English) A tidal race. Etymology 3

vb. (alternative form of roust English)

WordNet
roost
  1. n. a shelter with perches for fowl or other birds

  2. a perch on which domestic fowl rest or sleep

  3. v. sit, as on a branch; "The birds perched high in the treee" [syn: perch, rest]

  4. settle down or stay, as if on a roost

Wikipedia
Roost

Roost can refer to:

  • A resting place for birds, see Bird#Resting and roosting
  • A resting place for bats, see Bat roost#Artificial roosts
  • Roost Records
  • Roost-Warendin, France
  • Jan Van der Roost, Belgian composer

Usage examples of "roost".

Traces of an old roost: a scattering of frayed butts, toppled beer cans, empty matchbooks, an accumulation of names, dates, maledictions scratched into the supporting steelwork.

He had read about but never experienced the chill in the air, the cunning onset of dark, the sight of white villages, of animals seeking their nighttime roosts or holes, of nocturnal creatures stirring in the fugitive gloom, the general motivating tendency being one of rapid physical adaptation to a mistimed event.

Mary always waits at sunset to see the parakeets, her talismanic rosellas, fly over on their way to roost in the trees higher up the mountain.

And I have heard it said that to places like Lisconnel their pickings and stealings have at worst never been so serious a matter as those of another flock, finer of feather, but not less predacious in their habits, who roosted, for the most part, a long way off, and made their collections by deputy.

Somewhere along the stream a pileated woodpecker began drumming against a tree trunk in search of an insect snack and the racket startled a pair of prothonotary warblers from their roost in a nearby hackberry sapling.

Guild, Belgan had accepted the charge to free the Wastes of the corruption that now roosted in Tu-lar.

Vergere offered from one of the other beds, atop which she roosted like an outsize avian.

On reaching it there was a flurry of white, fan-tailed doves, which roosted on the sill outside.

A few of them are roosting in feathered skins on the roof of the porch and in the twisty boughs of the old crab apple tree growing up along one side of it.

If we go now we can reach a roosting place close enough to it to attack before the hunters leave in the morning.

Whether the Clumsy Ones were gone or not, it was time to seek a new roosting place.

It was like being a member of a band of starlings, or of roosting rooks.

Somehow she manages to wiggle through the crowd of Harvards around the posts, and the next thing anybody knows she shins up one of the posts faster than you can say scat, and pretty soon is roosting out on the crossbar between the posts like a chipmunk.

So the Harvards knock down Sam the Gonoph and Nubbsy Taylor and Jew Louie and Benny South Street and old Liverlips just once more and then all the Harvards put their heads together and say rah-rah-rah, very loud, and go away, leaving the goalposts still standing, with our little doll still roosting on the crossbar, although afterward I hear some Harvards who are not in the fight get the posts at the other end of the field and sneak away with them.

These were cannibal bats that rampaged among the roosting species, all of which were covered with tiny bloodsucking insects which themselves provided asylum for even smaller parasitic blood-fleas.