roc

Etymology

It is borrowed from Arabic رُخّ (ruḵḵ),^{[2][3][4][5][6][1]} which the OED calls of unknown origin, perhaps itself a loanword,^[2] and most other dictionaries derive from Persian رُخ (rukh).^{[3][4][7][8][1]} According to the OED, the earliest English forms came through Medieval Latin rochus, recorded before 1374 in the passage that the 1579 quotation translates, and later ones through French roc (1653), above all through Galland's French translation of the “Arabian Nights” (1705).^[2] Hoad and the Shorter Oxford relate the early forms to Spanish rocho and ruc, and Hoad also to Portuguese roco and Italian ruc.^[9][10] Weekley notes that the word was known in several European languages before the “Arabian Nights”, as Old French ruc in Marco Polo.^[11][2] The same Arabic word gave rook, the chess piece, and Etymonline notes that the two were confused in Middle English.^[3][8][12]

Earliest recorded meaning

A legendary bird of enormous size and strength: 1579.^[5][4] Etymonline dates it to the 1570s and notes that the bird appears in Marco Polo's account of Madagascar.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Early English forms included roche, roque and ruc;^[4][9][10] the spelling roc appeared in 1802 in a translation of the “Arabian Nights”, and was used by Thackeray and Charles Kingsley.^[4] According to the OED, as quoted by Etymonline, modern use of the word is mostly due to translations of the “Arabian Nights”,^[3] the first English one, of 1712, being made from Galland's French.^[2] The phrase roc's egg came to mean something marvellous or prodigious.^[3] Merriam-Webster also records roc as the name of an aerial bomb with a television apparatus, guided to its target by radio.^[5]

Timeline

• 1579 – a gigantic legendary bird.^[5][4]
• 1712 – in the English translation of Galland's “Arabian Nights”.^[2]
• 1802 – the spelling roc, in a translation of the “Arabian Nights”.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A bird of enormous size and strength in the legends of Arabia and the East, said to live in the region of the Indian Ocean.^[5][7][10]

Related words

• rook

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
7. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
12. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul