roguern.
/ˈrəʊɡə/, U.S. /ˈroʊɡər/ΚΠ
1800 in Naval Docs. U.S. Wars with Barbary Powers (1939) I. 387 The United States should..have six stout frigates in the Mediterranean, to keep Roguers in awe.
2. A person employed to identify and eliminate inferior or diseased plants in a crop, esp. a potato crop.
ΘΚΠ
the world > food and drink > farming > cultivation or tillage > cultivation of plants or crops > [noun] > thinning out > one who
singler1878
roguer1911
1911 Bull. Bureau Plant Industry, U.S. Dept. Agric. 24 31 There is always a possibility..that the blossoms of a plant so conspicuously ‘off’ that the roguer sees and removes it had already contaminated from one to a score of the surrounding plants.
1945 T. Whitehead et al. Potato in Health & Dis. (ed. 2) vii. 77 The roguer should remove or mark all plants which in any character differ substantially from the variety under consideration.
1999 Guardian 8 Sept. ii. 6/5 One summer roguer had such a big row with a farmer..that the student threw the old man's inhaler in a pond.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, November 2010; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1800