A rookie is a novice, a recruit, or a first-year participant in a major professional sport. Although the popularity of the word rookie can be traced to the popularity of the American sport of baseball, rookie actually made its first literary appearance in an 1892 verse by the cricket Rudyard Kipling.
Lexicographers believe rookie originated as an alteration of the word recruit .
And the evidence suggests the word's earliest use may have been as a derisive term for a new military recruit. Send your questions our way, rookie or not. Special thanks today to Paul Dickson.