Word.ws English Dictionary

roost

/ɹuːst/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/ɹʉwst/

roost noun: the place where a bird sleeps (usually its nest or a branch). Also the alternative form of roust.

Noun

roost (plural roosts)

  1. The place where a bird sleeps (usually its nest or a branch).
    • 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
  2. (collective) A group of birds roosting together.
    • a roost of birds is merely a fortuitous aggregation of individuals that have strategically placed their roost site to minimize distance to their supplemental and main food sources2018, Clark E. Adams, Urban Wildlife Management, CRC Press
    • A roost of chickens clucked excitedly in the undergrowth to the south of the Mata's enclosure, as a nocturnal snake hunted eggs2018, Chuma Nwokolo, The Extinction of Menai, Ohio University Press
  3. A bedroom.
  4. (Scotland) The open cross-joists or inner roof of a cottage or living space.
  5. (Australian rules football) A kick which causes the ball to travel a long distance.
  6. Synonym of perch (“a position that is secure and advantageous”).
    Synonyms:
    perch

Verb

roost (third-person singular simple present roosts, present participle roosting, simple past and past participle roosted)

  1. (intransitive) To settle on a perch in order to sleep or rest.
  2. (figuratively) To spend the night.
    • 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
  3. (transitive, Australian rules football) To kick (a ball) a long distance.

Also used as

roost is also the alternative form of roust.

roost meaning in Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada

roost in Hindi

रूस्ट

roost in Telugu

రూస్ట్

roost in Malayalam

റൂസ്റ്റ്

roost in Kannada

ರೂಸ್ಟ್
More languagesFewer languages
roost in Punjabi
ਰੁਸਟ, ਰੂਸਟ
roost in Gujarati
રૂસ્ટ
roost in Odia
ରୁଷ୍ଟ
roost in Nepali
रूस्ट

Examples of roost in a sentence

  • Opponents see the latest indictments as a case of the chickens coming home to roost.
  • Malcolm X ain't never lie; Chickens do come home to roost!
  • A pair of birds settle on the bough above them, murmuring together, ready to roost.

All 30 example sentences with roost

Synonyms of roost

Forms of roost

Noun
pluralroosts
Verb
third-person singular presentroosts
present participleroosting
past participleroosted
pastroosted

Plural of roost: roosts

Origin of roost

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”).

Words formed from roost

Phrases with roost

Words that rhyme with roost

Questions about roost

What does roost mean?
Roost means the place where a bird sleeps (usually its nest or a branch).
What is roost in Hindi?
Roost in Hindi is रूस्ट. See Roost meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is roost?
Roost can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce roost?
Roost is pronounced /ɹuːst/ (UK).
What is the plural of roost?
The plural of roost is roosts.

Words near roost in the dictionary

  1. roosing
  2. Rooskey
  3. Roosky
  4. Roosmalens' dwarf marmoset
  5. Roosmalens' dwarf marmosets
  6. roost
  7. roostcock
  8. roostcocks
  9. roosted
  10. rooster
  11. rooster booster

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: roost (page history and authors); roost (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); roost (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); roost (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); roost (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); roost (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); roost (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); roost (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); roost (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-roost.wav.

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