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rookie

Pronunciation: /ˈɹʊki/

The English word “rookie” has 7 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. An inexperienced recruit, especially in the police or armed forces.
  2. A novice.
  3. An athlete either new to the sport or to a team or in his/her first year of professional competition, especially said of baseball, basketball, hockey and American football players.
  4. A type of firecracker, used by farmers to scare rooks.

adjective

  1. Non-professional; amateur

verb

  1. To be a rookie; to go through one's inexperienced learning period in a job, team, or organization.
  2. To haze one or more rookies as an initiation ritual.

Etymology

Thought to be an alteration of recruit + -ie, or from rook (“a cheat”) + -ie. Another possible origin is Dutch broekie (short for broekvent (“a boy still in short trousers”)), a common term for a shipmate. Also suggested is Irish rúca (“an inexperienced person”).

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.