rooster

Etymology

roost + -er. In the regions where it is used, displaced cock through taboo avoidance.

noun

1. (Canada, US, Kent, Australia, New Zealand) A male domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) or other gallinaceous bird.
   Their other dish […] contain'd a number of roast fowls—half a dozen, we suppose, & all roosters at this season no doubt. March 14 1772, A.G. Winslow, Diary
   The produce of two hens and a cock, or rooster, as the Yankees term that bird. 1836, Catharine Parr Traill, The Backwoods of Canada, page 308
2. A bird or bat which roosts or is roosting.
   The more leisured flight of the roosters [[Unsupported titles/`lsqb`sc.#English|[sc.]] starlings] was in contrast to the steady procession of the migrants. 1949, British Birds, 42, p. 323
   Ground roosters like Northern Harriers may be subject to predation by Great-horned Owls […] but still larger perchers like herons and Ospreys use snags or posts in conspicuous places but are large enough to escape aerial predators. 1999, Milton W. Weller, Wetland Birds: Habitat Resources and Conservation Implications
3. (figurative, obsolete slang) An informer.
4. (figurative, obsolete slang) A violent or disorderly person.
5. (figurative) A powerful, prideful, or pompous person.
6. (figurative, originally US slang, now chiefly New Zealand) A man.
7. (regional US, historical) A wild violet, when used in a children's game based on cockfighting.
   In April they played Hens and Roosters, yoking their wild white and blue violets to see which would get its head pulled off. 1946, Conrad Richter, The Fields, page 231
8. (obsolete US slang) Legislation solely devised to benefit the legislators proposing it.
   American demoralisation... has carried rooster into the halls of republican legislation, where it indicates a bill or proposed law which will remunerate the legislators. 1869 July, Southern Review, page 54