Other forms: rooks
A rook is a big black bird of the crow family that lives in noisy colonies at the tops of tall trees. Bare grey skin at the base of the beak, a shaggy, trousered look to the legs, and forty ragged nests in one line of trees behind a church.
That colony has its own word, a rookery, which English then lent to any crowded, noisy place. In chess the rook is the piece shaped like a castle tower, the one that moves in straight lines along ranks and files, and castle is what most players call it out loud. An old verb survives too: to rook somebody is to cheat them out of money, which is where a rooking price comes from. Rooks are not crows and not ravens — rooks gather, crows keep their own company, and that is the countryside rule for telling them apart at a distance.
1nounrookA large black bird of the crow family that nests in colonies in treetops.
“A hundred rooks lifted off the field at once.”
2nounchessThe chess piece shaped like a castle tower, which moves in straight lines.
“She lost her rook on the sixteenth move and the game with it.”
3verbcheatTo cheat somebody, especially out of money (dated).
“They rooked him for three hundred pounds on a car that never ran.”
rook is a bird.
This recorded history belongs to the chess piece, not the bird. It runs from Middle Persian, through Persian رخ (rukh), into Old French as roc and on into Middle English as rook. The Persian word named the chess piece itself, so the castle on the board has never had anything to do with feathers.
pal
lhw' — rook, castle (chess)
Persian
رخ
Old French
roc
Middle English
rook
English, today
rook
Middle English rook, rooke, roke, rok, from Old French roc, ultimately from Persian رخ, from pal lhw' (“rook, castle (chess)”). Compare roc.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA