rogue

Etymology

Uncertain. From either: * Earlier English roger (“a begging vagabond who pretends to be a poor scholar from Oxford or Cambridge”), possibly from Latin rogō (“I 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”).

noun

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 […] 1834, Sir Walter Scott, The abbott: being a sequel to The monastery, Volume 19
   … 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
   As The Dark Knight Rises brings a close to Christopher Nolan’s staggeringly ambitious Batman trilogy, it’s worth remembering that director chose The Scarecrow as his first villain—not necessarily the most popular among the comic’s gallery of rogues, but the one who set the tone for entire series. July 18 2012, Scott Tobias, “The Dark Knight Rises”, in AV Club
2. A mischievous scamp.
3. A vagrant.
4. (computing) Deceitful software pretending to be anti-spyware, but in fact being malicious software itself.
   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'. October 29, 2009, 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. October 31, 2013, “Windows PUPs: how do I remove potentially unwanted programs?”, in The Guardian
   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. August 20, 2014, Ian Barker, “Microsoft detects fall in fake antivirus traffic”, in BetaNews
5. An aggressive animal separate from the herd, especially an elephant.
6. A plant that shows some undesirable variation.
   2000 Carol Deppe, Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, Totnes: Chelsea Green Pub. 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.
7. (role-playing games) A character class focusing on stealthy conduct.

adj

1. (of an animal, especially an elephant) Vicious and solitary.
2. (by extension) Large, destructive and unpredictable.
3. (by extension) 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 and its foes’ glee. 2013-06-29, “Travels and travails”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8842, page 55

verb

1. (horticulture) To cull; to destroy plants not meeting a required standard, especially when saving seed, rogue or unwanted plants are removed before pollination.
   2000 Carol Deppe, Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, Totnes: Chelsea Green Pub. 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.
2. (transitive, dated) 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.
4. (intransitive, obsolete) To wander; to play the vagabond; to play knavish tricks.