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Actress Meryl Streep tweeted the folloiwng:

"This was me on my way home from an audition for King Kong where I was told I was too “ugly” for the part. This was a pivotal moment for me. This one rogue opinion could derail my dreams of becoming an actress or force me to pull myself up by the boot straps and believe in myself."

I looked up the dictionary and find "rogue" is usually used as an adjective to describe a person, either as:

  1. a man or boy who behaves badly, but who you like in spite of this - often used humorously; or
  2. a man who is dishonest and has a bad character

How should I make sense of "rogue" when it is used to describe an opinion? It appears to me a very unusual usage here.

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    Oxford Dictionary gives, "A person or thing that behaves in an aberrant or unpredictable way, typically with damaging or dangerous effects". – 13509 Jun 4 '16 at 14:35
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    A rogue elephant is one that leaves the herd and runs amok. A spy who goes rogue stops following orders from his superiors and acts on his own; he, like the elephant, cannot be controlled. So the word rogue could have the figuratively sense here of diverging from the norm, from the usual, destructively. – Tᴚoɯɐuo Jun 4 '16 at 14:36
  • Meryl Streep is an American actress, BTW. – Tᴚoɯɐuo Jun 4 '16 at 14:49
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Note that in this context, the word rogue is used as an adjective, not a noun: the definitions you quoted sound like those for the noun.

As an adjective, it means behaving in ways that are not expected or not normal, often in a way that causes damage.

In the context of your sentence, it means that the opinion was unexpected and could cause damage (by derailing her dreams).

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    Fixed the link for you. ;-) – Damkerng T. Jun 7 '16 at 18:41
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The dictionary definition of rogue is:

  1. a dishonest or unprincipled man. "you are a rogue and an embezzler"
  2. an elephant or other large wild animal driven away or living apart from the herd and having savage or destructive tendencies.

Regarding the context of the sentence we can eliminate the unprincipled man portion as no people are mentioned in the phrase "rogue opinion" and thus we are left with the definition regarding the stray elephant and the concept of dishonesty.

"This was me on my way home from an audition for King Kong where I was told I was too “ugly” for the part. This was a pivotal moment for me. This one rogue opinion could derail my dreams of becoming an actress or force me to pull myself up by the boot straps and believe in myself."

In the paragraph we are given some context clues as to which of the two remaining definitions it could be. We can substitute the definition of each to find which fits the context better.

and we end up with:

"This was me on my way home from an audition for King Kong where I was told I was too “ugly” for the part. This was a pivotal moment for me. This one dishonest opinion could derail my dreams of becoming an actress or force me to pull myself up by the boot straps and believe in myself."

and

"This was me on my way home from an audition for King Kong where I was told I was too “ugly” for the part. This was a pivotal moment for me. This one destructive opinion could derail my dreams of becoming an actress or force me to pull myself up by the boot straps and believe in myself."

Note that destructive was part of the definition for rogue in relation to stray animals. Making this statement metaphorically "rogue"

We can now finally select the correct one!

I believe the second one to be correct

A dishonest opinion implies foul play in my mind and there is no context clues to support this. Destructive makes more sense in the sentence itself.

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