rocky
1 Americanadjective
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inclined or likely to rock; tottering; shaky; unsteady.
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difficult or uncertain; full of hazards or obstacles.
a business with a rocky future.
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physically unsteady or weak, as from sickness.
adjective
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consisting of or abounding in rocks
a rocky shore
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hard or unyielding
rocky determination
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hard like rock
rocky muscles
adjective
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weak, shaky, or unstable
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informal (of a person) dizzy; sickly; nauseated
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of rocky1
First recorded in 1400–50; rock 1 + -y 1 ( def. )
Origin of rocky2
Explanation
Anything rocky is covered with rocks, like a rocky beach or hillside. You can also use rocky for something that moves in a bumpy or uneven manner, like a rocky ride in a Jeep. There's a figurative sense of rocky that means "difficult, rough, or up-and-down" like your rocky relationship with your sister or a struggling business's rocky future. This meaning comes from a combination of the "uneven and covered with rocks" definition and the verb rock, or "sway back and forth." The Rocky Mountains, which aren't actually all that rocky, were named for the local Native American people, called "the stone Sioux" by their Cree neighbors.
Vocabulary lists containing rocky
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:
"Worrying", "freefall" and "rude awakening" were all bandied around in the immediate aftermath of the club's heaviest ever two-legged European defeat as new boss Wouter Vrankcen's tenure got off to a rocky start.
From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026
Zelle also got off to a rocky start, only to gain steam as it got embedded into the banking apps that customers already used.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
Tech stocks led U.S. futures higher, as equities looked set to turn a corner on a period of rocky trading caused by artificial-intelligence jitters and a return to war in the Middle East.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 27, 2026
It is a place out of time, reached by a rocky road between arid hills and the sea where you have to dodge stray cows, goats and wild horses.
From Barron's ● Jul. 21, 2026
There was a dusty little road leading into the woods, but soon it became a narrow, rocky trail, which twisted and wound until I thought I might be going in circles.
From "Rump: The (Fairly) True Story of Rumpelstilskin" by Liesl Shurtliff
Yields on Treasurys had risen in recent days, with many traders wagering on higher inflation, and a rockier path to lower interest rates this year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 25, 2026
But after all the effort invested into building up this relationship, it has never been in a rockier place than it is now.
From BBC ● Mar. 3, 2026
Their results show that either planet could be dominated by water-rich layers or by a far rockier structure.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 10, 2025
But it’s been a rockier road than they had hoped.
From Salon ● Nov. 13, 2025
The land surrounding it was rockier than any other place we knew, and the path to it branched off underneath a massive fallen oak that looked somewhat like a mermaid.
From "The Season of Styx Malone" by Kekla Magoon
That is helping Weyerhaeuser ride out one of the rockiest periods for the forest-products industry in the past two decades.
From Barron's ● Dec. 16, 2025
But redemption truly will be judged in this series, and he got off to the rockiest of starts, missing his first six threes before finally splashing one in the fourth.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 20, 2024
Tennessee football hit the rockiest of bottoms in late January 2021.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 23, 2022
It was one of the rockiest starts for a wide release of Android yet, and hopefully, history doesn’t repeat itself with the Pixel 7 launch right around the corner.
From The Verge ● Sep. 6, 2022
The trail maintainers in Maine have a certain hale devotion to seeking out the rockiest climbs and most forbidding slopes, and of these Maine has a breathtaking plenitude.
From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
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.
