What does snuff the rooster mean?

Answer 1

"Snuff the Rooster" is an old expression meaning to extract a rooster from a hen house. Roosters are very territorial birds and highly protective of hens. Farmers use to try to keep their rooster(s) separate from their hens and the hen house, unless, of course, the farmers wanted breed the birds. If the rooster got into the hen house then they were difficult to get out because they would become aggressive due to all the hens being around. In order to get the rooster out of the hen house farmers would first remove all the hens and then fill the hen house with smoke. The rooster would begin snuffing the smoke and would eventually leave the hen house. Whenever a rooster would get in the hen house farmers would tell each other it was time to snuff the rooster and that's how the expression "Snuff the Rooster" came about.

In times of war the expression is used as well meaning to kill or extract the person laying cover for their group (platoon, companies, units, etc...). The person laying cover is consider the rooster. It's a comparison to a real rooster because the person laying cover is given a violent/aggressive role to protect the group much like how a real rooster behaves when around hens. Usually the rooster is given a weapon that has a lot of fire power and sometimes this weapon is given the name rooster as well. The expression has been popularized from a song by Alice in Chains called "Rooster".