Rogue - rouge

Do not confuse - and do not let your spell-checker confuse - the two words rogue and rouge. They have precisely the same letters, and neither reveals its pronunciation with ease.

• Rogue, which is basically a noun, is pronounced 'ROAG' (IPA: /rəʊg/). The basic meaning of the noun was originally, in the sixteenth century when it was coined, 'a vagrant', 'tramp', 'ne'er-do-well'. Then it became more specifically 'a bad man', "a man who behaves in a dishonest or criminal way" (Collins COBUILD). Its intensity began to diminish, and it is now used more often to mean 'a mischievous person', "One who is of a mischievous disposition. As OED puts it, (meaning 3., it is "Common as a playful term of reproof or reproach, and freq[uently] used as a term of endearment by 17th c[entury] dramatists."
  • From this, there are various adjectival uses, all to do with the idea of 'things going wrong'.
    • A rogue elephant is a solitary male, living away from a herd, and often doing much damage. Other animals may be rogues, as being seen as out of control: the 'rogues' badge' for a horse was blinkers, fitted where a horse was liable to shy away from strange sights.
    • A rogue plant is an unhealthy, puny or deformed plant that a gardener will take out and throw away.
    • In terms of human products, rogue is applied to items that are below the expected standard, usually in an inexplicable or even random way. Out of the many tins of foodstuffs that are sold every day, every so often there will be a rogue that is not right; when people make pellets of nuclear fuel, every so often there is a rogue that has to be rejected. There is a well-known phenomenon of cars manufactured at the end of the working week, when before action was taken to address the problem, the workers' attention was liable to be diverted, and the cars were more often deficient - or rogue.
    • A rogue state is one that is perceived as being dangerous to the international community and existing outside the norms of diplomacy and international law. Its behaviour, and that of its leaders, is seen as unpredictable.
• Rouge - a French word - is pronounced 'ROOJ' (IPA: /ruːʒ/). It is the French adjective translating 'red'. In English, it is basically used as a noun: it has also been used as an adjective and a verb
  • Its use as a noun in English stems virtually always from the name of a cosmetic: a powder used to make the cheeks, lips etc redder than their owner's natural colour.
    • There is also a red powder used for polishing silver known as jewellers' rouge. (It is also called 'plate powder'.)
  • Rouge is also used as an adjective to reflect certain French interests: in the nineteenth century there was a popular gambling card game called Rouge et Noir ('Red and Black'), as it is still usual at roulette tables to call the colours on which players gamble Rouge and Noir, which reflects the Victorians' stereotype|stereotypical]] image of France as a decadent and immoral country; further back, the mediaeval view of the France as the centre of culture is reflected in the language of heraldry, where some officers of the College of Heralds are still called Rouge Croix and Rouge Dragon. It is also used in various technical senses in the arts, for glazes used in ceramics.
  • The verb 'to rouge' is rarely heard these days. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was used pejoratively to describe the practice (then disapproved of) of making up one's face with cosmetics. It was also used to mean 'blush', for natural causes such as embarrassment.
    • A participial adjective rouged is derived from the verb, meaning 'made up'. It was used dismissively.