Definition of "rooster"

Their other dish […] contain'd a number of roast fowls—half a dozen, we suppose, & all roosters at this season no doubt.

1772 March 14, A.G. Winslow, Diary

The produce of two hens and a cock, or rooster, as the Yankees term that bird.

1836, Catharine Parr Traill, The Backwoods of Canada, page 308

Chalk a circle for a rooster.

1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 16]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], part III [Nostos], page 616

The more leisured flight of the roosters [sc. starlings] was in contrast to the steady procession of the migrants.

1949, British Birds, 42, p. 323

Ground roosters like Northern Harriers may be subject to predation by Great-horned Owls […] but still larger perchers like herons and Ospreys use snags or posts in conspicuous places but are large enough to escape aerial predators.

1999, Milton W. Weller, Wetland Birds: Habitat Resources and Conservation Implications

In April they played Hens and Roosters, yoking their wild white and blue violets to see which would get its head pulled off.

1946, Conrad Richter, The Fields, page 231

American demoralisation... has carried rooster into the halls of republican legislation, where it indicates a bill or proposed law which will remunerate the legislators.

1869 July, Southern Review, page 54