Word.ws English Dictionary

rogue

UK/ˈɹəʊɡ//ˈɹoʊɡ/

rogue noun: a scoundrel, rascal or unprincipled, deceitful, and unreliable person.

Noun

rogue (plural rogues)

  1. A scoundrel, rascal or unprincipled, deceitful, and unreliable person.
    • And meet time it was, when yon usher, vinegar-faced rogue that he is, began to inquire what popish trangam you were wearing […]1820, [Walter Scott], The Abbot. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and...
    • He had told more lies in his time, and undergone more baseness of stratagem in order to stave off a small debt, or to swindle a poor creditor, than would have sufficed to make a fortune for a braver rogue.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC
  2. A mischievous scamp.
    • Ah, you sweet little rogue, you!c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]. Epilogue.”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […]...
  3. A vagrant.
  4. Malware that deceitfully presents itself as antispyware.
    • An entry in the Microsoft Malware Protection Center's Threat Research & Response Blog shows that rogue AV, also known as scareware, is ruling the malware roost, as 6 top of the 10 malicious programs removed by the MSRT (Malicious Software Removal Tool) in the US in October were 'rogues'.2009 October 29, Larry Seltzer, “Scareware Tops Microsoft's Malware List”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)
    • Next, click the "Installed on" heading in the Windows 7 uninstaller to sort the list by date, and see if any programs have the same date and time stamps as your rogues.2013 October 31, “Windows PUPs: how do I remove potentially unwanted programs?”, in The Guardian
  5. An aggressive animal separate from the herd, especially an elephant.
    • If he is a rogue, and there's any truth to territoriality at all, we got a good chance of spotting him between Cape Scott and South Beach.1975, Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb, Jaws, spoken by Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss)
  6. (Australia) A horse, mule, or donkey that is difficult to control; a refractory horse, especially a racehorse.
    • The rogues among the horses and mules sought every chance to break the line and hide under shady trees where sweet grass grew.1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 7
  7. A plant that shows some undesirable variation.
    • Maintaining varieties also requires selection, however. It's usually referred to as culling or roguing. ...we examine the [plant] population and eliminate the occasional rogue.2000, Carol Deppe, Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, Totnes: Chelsea Green Pub
  8. (roleplaying games) A character class focusing on stealthy conduct.
    • As a rogue, I weave together light and heavy attacks, sometimes holding a button longer to charge an attack and build up the stagger meter on an enemy.2025 February, Lauren Morton, “Review: Dragon Age: The Veilguard”, in PC Gamer (US), number 392, page 54; published online 28 October 2024

Adjective

rogue (comparative more rogue, superlative most rogue)

  1. (especially an elephant) Vicious and solitary.
    • Mosquito. One lone rogue mosquito.1995, Paul Vautin, Turn It Up!, Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, page 140
  2. (broadly) Large, destructive and unpredictable.
  3. (broadly) Deceitful, unprincipled.
    • In the minds of Republican hard-liners, the "Silent Majority" of Americans who had elected the President, and even Nixon's two Democrat predecessors, China was a gigantic nuke-wielding rogue state prepared to overrun the free world at any moment.2004, Chris Wallace, Character: Profiles in Presidential Courage
  4. Mischievous, unpredictable.
    • Even without hovering drones, a lurking assassin, a thumping score and a denouement, the real-life story of Edward Snowden, a rogue spy on the run, could be straight out of the cinema. But, as with Hollywood, the subplots and exotic locations may distract from the real message: America’s discomfort...2013 June 29, “Travels and travails”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 55

Verb

rogue (third-person singular simple present rogues, present participle roguing or rogueing, simple past and past participle rogued)

  1. To cull; to destroy plants not meeting a required standard, especially when saving seed, rogue or unwanted plants are removed before pollination.
    • Maintaining varieties also requires selection, however. It's usually referred to as culling or roguing. ...we examine the [plant] population and eliminate the occasional rogue.2000, Carol Deppe, Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, Totnes: Chelsea Green Pub
    • Our skill as roguers was being tested. After we had rogued a field the field was inspected and the potatoes classified Stock Seed, A, B or H. In those days, between Stock seed and Class A, there was £2 per ton of potatoes difference.2015, David W. Torrance, The Reluctant Minister
  2. (dated, transitive) To cheat.
    • And then to think that Mark should have rogued me of five shiners! He was clever—that's a fact.1883, Prairie Farmer, volume 55, page 29
  3. (obsolete) To give the name or designation of rogue to; to decry.
    • he Atheists may endeavour to rogue and ridicule all incorporeal Substance1678, R[alph] Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe: The First Part; wherein All the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is Confuted; and Its Impossibility Demonstrated, London: […]...
  4. (intransitive, obsolete) To wander; to play the vagabond; to play knavish tricks.
    • if hee be but once so taken idlely roguing1596 (date written; published 1633), Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande […], Dublin: […] Societie of Stationers, […], →OCLC; republished as A View of the State of Ireland […]...

Proper noun capitalized: Rogue

Rogue (plural Rogues)

  1. A surname.

rogue meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

rogue in Hindi

a scoundrel, rascal or unprincipled, deceitful, and unreliable person
दुष्ट duṣṭ

rogue in Tamil

அயோக்கியன்

rogue in Marathi

बदमाश

rogue in Urdu

rogue
لفنگا lafaṅgā
More languagesFewer languages
rogue in Bengali
দুর্বৃত্ত, চালাক প্রতারক
rogue in Telugu
దుర్మార్గుడు durmārguḍu
rogue in Malayalam
വഞ്ചകൻ vañcakaṉ, ചതിയൻ catiyaṉ, കുറുക്കൻ kuṟukkaṉ
rogue in Kannada
ಪೋಕ pōka, ಹೋಕ hōka, ಪೋಕರಿ pōkari
rogue in Gujarati
ખળ khaḷ
rogue in Sanskrit
धूर्त dhūrta
rogue in Indonesian
bajingan
rogue in Myanmar
ငတေ nga.te

Examples of rogue in a sentence

  • […] No rogue e’er felt the halter draw, with a good opinion of the law, and perhaps my own detestation of the law arises from my having frequently broken it.1913, Robert Barr, chapter 4, in Lord Stranleigh Abroad:
  • Now though researchers at Microsoft's Malware Protection Center are reporting a downward trend in the traffic generated by some of the most popular rogues over the past 12 months.2014 August 20, Ian Barker, “Microsoft detects fall in fake antivirus traffic”, in BetaNews:
  • Even without hovering drones, a lurking assassin, a thumping score and a denouement, the real-life story of Edward Snowden, a rogue spy on the run, could be straight out of the cinema.2013 June 29, “Travels and travails”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 55:

All 40 example sentences with rogue

Synonyms of rogue

23 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of rogue

Forms of rogue

Noun
pluralrogues
alternative misspellingrouge
Adjective
comparativemore rogue
superlativemost rogue
Verb
third-person singular presentrogues
present participleroguing
present participlerogueing
past participlerogued
pastrogued
Proper noun
pluralRogues

Plural of rogue: rogues

Origin of rogue

Uncertain. From either: * Earlier English roger (“a begging vagabond who pretends to be a poor scholar from Oxford or Cambridge”), possibly from Latin rogō (“to ask”). * Middle French rogue (“arrogant, haughty”), from Old Northern French rogre (“aggressive”), from Old Norse hrokr (“excess, exuberance”), for which see Icelandic hroki (“arrogance”), though OED does not document this. * Celtic; see Breton rog (“haughty”).

English surname, originally a nickname derived from the adjective. See rogue.

Words formed from rogue

Phrases with rogue

2 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with rogue

Questions about rogue

What does rogue mean?
Rogue means a scoundrel, rascal or unprincipled, deceitful, and unreliable person.
What is rogue in Hindi?
Rogue in Hindi is दुष्ट (duṣṭ). See Rogue meaning in Hindi.
How do you use rogue in a sentence?
[…] No rogue e’er felt the halter draw, with a good opinion of the law, and perhaps my own detestation of the law arises from my having frequently broken it.
What part of speech is rogue?
Rogue can be a noun, an adjective, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce rogue?
Rogue is pronounced /ˈɹəʊɡ/ (UK).
What is the plural of rogue?
The plural of rogue is rogues.

Words near rogue in the dictionary

  1. Rogowski coils
  2. Rogowskis
  3. Rogozinski
  4. Rogozinskis
  5. rogs
  6. rogue
  7. rogue access point
  8. rogue access points
  9. rogue apostrophe
  10. rogue apostrophes
  11. rogue elephant

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rogue (page history and authors); Rogue (page history and authors); rogue (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); rogue (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); لفنگا (Urdu) (page history and authors); rogue (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ખળ (Gujarati) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-rogue.ogg.

Cite this entry: “rogue.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rogue. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.