Roust

Roust is a verb meaning to wake someone or to drive people or animals out of a place by forceful or energetic action. The most common sense is to awaken someone from sleep: for example, “The alarm rousted him from bed.” It can also mean to cause people to leave a place or to remove them from an area: “The guards rousted the detainees from the hall.” In this sense, roust conveys a firmer, more abrupt connotation than simple rousing or waking.

Roust is typically used transitively, with objects such as someone being rousted, or in phrasal forms like roust out or roust from. It tends to appear in reporting, policing, military, or other contexts where a forceful awakening or displacement is described. The term carries a somewhat dated or colloquial tone in contemporary prose, but remains understood in various registers.

Origin and derivatives: the verb is of English origin, first attested in the early modern period, likely evolving as a sharper variant of rouse. A related noun usage is rare but may appear as “a roust” to denote the act of rousting or a wake-up. The more common related term in everyday language is rouse; a closely related noun is roustabout, which denotes a laborer, especially on ships or in oil fields.

See also: rouse, wake, roustabout.