rookery
Americannoun
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a breeding place or colony of gregarious birds or animals, as penguins and seals.
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a colony of rooks.
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a place where rooks congregate to breed.
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a crowded tenement house.
noun
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a group of nesting rooks
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a clump of trees containing rooks' nests
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a breeding ground or communal living area of certain other species of gregarious birds or mammals, esp penguins or seals
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a colony of any such creatures
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archaic an overcrowded slum tenement building or area of housing
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of rookery
Vocabulary lists containing rookery
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
For the study, scientists collected brain samples from four sea lions, one fur seal and a tern found dead at the most affected sea lion rookery in Argentina.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 28, 2024
The declining water level uncovered a land bridge connecting an island rookery to the shore.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 19, 2023
The expedition was the first to sight an Emperor Penguin rookery and obtain an egg of the species.
From BBC ● Sep. 26, 2022
In June and early July, the rookery would typically resemble a nursery overrun with featherless black-skinned newborns with pterodactyl features or weeks-old hatchlings with heart-shaped brown patches on their backs.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 1, 2022
"Maester Pylos, do me a kindness and bring the bird down from the rookery for the Lady Shireen."
From "A Clash of Kings" by George R.R. Martin
The females, they say, may make lots of connections at the rookeries where they congregate to give birth.
From Science Magazine ● Dec. 15, 2023
Point La Jolla, known as one of California’s prime sea lion rookeries, will no longer be accessible to the public after a unanimous vote by the San Diego City Council.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 20, 2023
“That’s what makes California so special: From San Francisco, you can go see any of these three major mainland rookeries within a one-day drive,” Ratner told me.
From New York Times ● Mar. 16, 2023
The Jet Skis either deliberately or accidentally can go up too close to the rookeries.
From BBC ● Jan. 28, 2023
Perhaps if one less dragonfly had drowned in the Carboniferous swamps, the intelligent organisms on our planet today would have feathers and teach their young in rookeries.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
