at rovers

English

Prepositional phrase

at rovers

1. (obsolete) At casual marks; hence, at random.

   shooting at rovers

   • 1551 Raphe Robynson translation of Thomas More's Utopia T. F. Didbin's 1808 edition, Vol.2 Ch.9 p.161:

     Bound down on every side with many bands because it shall not run at rovers.

   • 1726, Joseph Addison, Dialogues upon the usefulness of ancient medals: Especially in relation to the Latin and Greek poets‎^[1]:

     You must always give your men of great reading leave to show their talents on the meanest subjects, says Eugenius ; it is a kind of shooting at rovers : where a man lets fly his arrow without taking any aim, to show his strength.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “at rovers”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• Traverso, traverso