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Winged Rooks

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Outwitted sharpers. A rook is a sharper, and a rookery the place of resort for sharpers. A rook is the opposite of a pigeon; a rook cheats, a pigeon is the one cheated.

“This light, young, gay in appearance, the thoughtless youth of wit and pleasure—the pigeon rather than the rook—but the heart the same sly, shrewd, cold-blooded calculator.”—Sir W. Scott: Peveril of the Peak, chap. xxviii.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.