Dictionary

roky en · ADJ

Etymology

From roke + -y.

Meanings

1. (UK, dialectal) Misty; foggy; cloudy.
   • He […] in a roky hollow, belling, etc. Roky (associated with reek) means misty, foggy. 1896, Alfred Tennyson Baron Tennyson, Lancelot and Elaine, and Other Idylls of the King, page 189:
   • they slaver men sayne - Lyke a roky rayne. - Skelton. 1866, John Greaves Nall, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft: A Handbook for Visitors and Residents; with Chapters on the Archaeology, Natural History, &c., of the District; a History, with Statistics, of the East Coast Herring Fishery, and an Etymological and Comparative Glossary of the Dialect of East Anglia, page 636:
   • They walked around in the roky damp, in silence. 1993, Annie Proulx, The Shipping News, Scribner, published 1999, →ISBN, page 40:
2. Exhibiting roke (a defect in steel ingots).
   • […] scaly, and frightfully roky bar. 1877, Van Nostrand's Eclectic Engineering Magazine, page 469:
   • then elongate and “open-out,” producing “roky” billets and blooms. When the cracks are from top to bottom, i.e. longitudinal, it is usually because cooling, after the ingot has been taken out of the mould, has been uneven. 1942, Eric N. Simons, Edwin Gregory, Steel Manufacture Simply Explained:

Forms

Synonyms

rawky