Rogue

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Rogue.jpg

Origin

Unknown, but the N.E.D. (1909) claims that the medial -g- in Roger (An itinerant beggar pretending to be a poor scholar from Oxford or Cambridge.) was pronounced as a plosive rather than an affricate, a conjecture for which there is no supporting evidence. On the basis of this assumption, it suggests that the word may be related to rogue n., and also compares rogation n. However, there is no evidence to support these conjectures, and an etymological connection with the family of classical Latin rogāre (see rogation n.) is unlikely.

Definitions

  • 1: vagrant, tramp
  • 2: a dishonest or worthless person : scoundrel
  • 3: a mischievous person : scamp
  • 4: a horse inclined to shirk or misbehave
  • 5: an individual exhibiting a chance and usually inferior biological variation

Description

A rogue is a vagrant person who wanders from place to place. Like a drifter, a rogue is an independent person who rejects conventional rules of society in favor of following their own personal goals and values.

In modern English language, the term rogue is used pejoratively to describe a dishonest or unprincipled person whose behavior one disapproves of, but who is nonetheless likeable or attractive.

The word rogue was first recorded in print in John Awdely's Fraternity of Vagabonds (1561), and then in Thomas Harman's Caveat for Common Cursitors (1566).

In England, the 1572 Vagabonds Act defined a rogue as a person who has no land, no master, and no legitimate trade or source of income; it included rogues in the class of idle vagrants or vagabonds. If a person were apprehended as a rogue, he would be stripped to the waist, whipped until bleeding, and a hole, about the compass of an inch about, would be burned through the cartilage of his right ear with a hot iron. A rogue who was charged with a second offence, unless taken in by someone who would give him work for one year, could face execution as a felony. A rogue charged with a third-offence would only escape death if someone hired him for two years.

The 1598 Vagabonds Act banished and transplanted "incorrigible and dangerous rogues" overseas, and the 1604 Act commanded that rogues be branded with the letter "R" on their bodies.