rookie
Pluralrookies
Verbrookies, rookying, rookied
Pluralrookies
Formsrookies, rookying, rookied
- 1
- 2An athlete new to a sport or team, or in his or her first year of professional competition, especially in baseball, basketball, hockey, and American football.
The rookie struggled early in the season but earned a starting spot by the playoffs.
Several rookies made the final roster after a strong training camp.
Similarnewcomer, debutant, freshman
Oppositeveteran
- 3A newly recruited member, especially of the police or the military, who still lacks experience.
The rookie hesitated before reaching for her radio during the drill.
Veteran officers keep a close eye on rookies during their first night shift.
Similarrecruit, trainee, cadet, probationer
Oppositeveteran
Note
The barracks-and-precinct sense, and the one the word's uncertain origin fits most neatly. One theory reads it as recruit, altered and given the familiar ending -ie. Others derive it from rook, "a cheat"; from Dutch broekie, a boy still in short trousers and a common term for a shipmate; or from Irish rúca, "an inexperienced person". None is settled, so treat any confident story with caution.
- 4Non-professional; carried out by amateurs rather than experts.
The film had a charming, rookie quality that critics found refreshing.
Their rookie production lacked polish but showed real promise.
Similaramateur, amateurish, inexperienced, novice
Oppositeprofessional, polished
Note
An adjective that almost always stands before a noun, and its natural home is the phrase rookie mistake, meaning an error only a beginner would make. Unlike most nouns turned adjectives, it takes comparison. Speakers say rookier and rookiest, as in the rookiest of rookie mistakes, to mean an especially naive slip.
- 5To be a beginner in a job, team, or organization, going through the early period of learning.
New hires usually rookie for several months before taking on full duties.
He rookied quietly, learning the ropes without complaint.
Note
A verb made from the noun that nearly always looks back on a beginning: he rookied in 1980, since I rookied, pledged together, rookied together. It takes no object. The year or role follows with in or as (rookied as a smokejumper). Bill Loomis uses it of a Detroit Tigers outfielder and Jonathan Kellerman of a police officer, so it serves sport and service alike.
- 6To haze one or more new recruits as an initiation ritual.
Veterans rookie the newcomers with a string of pranks before the first game.
The squad rookied their freshmen during the preseason retreat.
Note
A sports word for what veterans do to newcomers, and it lives mostly in the passive: people say they were rookied, rarely who rookied them. Harold C. Bloxham, writing of artillery training in 1919, was "rookied in" for a policing-up detail, so the word knew barracks before ice rinks. Keep it apart from being a newcomer yourself: that verb takes no object, while this one always has a victim.
- 7A type of firecracker whose bang is used on farms to frighten rooks away.
Each morning the farmer lit a rookie to drive the rooks off the seedbeds.
The bang of a rookie carried across the fields.
Similarbanger
Note
A British farm word for a firecracker that works by noise alone, set off by farmers to drive rooks away. The bird is right there in the name, so this is the one use of rookie that has nothing to do with newcomers or beginners. In context the meaning is clear, but out of context a reader will almost always hear the newcomer first.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of rookie apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
Thought to be an alteration of "recruit" + "-ie," or from "rook" ("a cheat") + "-ie." Other possible origins include Dutch broekie (from broekvent, "a boy still in short trousers"), a common term for a shipmate, or Irish rúca ("an inexperienced person").