roast [ME] The word roast is from Old French rostir, of West Germanic origin. Roast originally meant to cook before a fire while *bake meant ‘cook in an oven’; but now that we rarely use an open fire the distinction between roast and bake refers to the type of food. The colloquial sense ‘ridicule, criticize’ dates from the early 18th century. A roster [E18th] was originally a list of duties and leave for military personnel. It comes from Dutch rooster ‘list’, earlier ‘gridiron’, from roosten ‘to roast’, with reference to its parallel lines.