Brewer's: Rooky Wood

(The). Not the wood where rooks do congregate, but the misty or dark wood. The verb reek (to emit vapour) had the preterite roke, rook, or roak; hence Hamilton, in his Wallace, speaks of the “rooky mist.”

Light thickens, and the crow Makes wing to the roaky wood.

Shakespeare: Macbeth, iii. 2.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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