Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To search for and expose misconduct in public life.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A rake for scraping muck or filth. Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress.
Wiktionary
- v. to search for and expose corruption or scandal especially as done by a journalist.
GNU Webster's 1913
- obs. A rake for scraping up muck or dung. See muckrake, v. i., below.
- v. To seek for, expose, or charge, especially habitually, corruption, real or alleged, on the part of public men and corporations.
WordNet 3.0
- v. explore and expose misconduct and scandals concerning public figures
Etymologies
- muck + rake (Wiktionary)
- From the man with the muckrake, tool for raking muck, who cannot look up to heaven because he is so obsessed with the muck of worldly profit, in Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“HOFFER: And it has a kind of muckrake -- or a sort of -- you know, muckrakers at the beginning of the 20th century were attacking the robber barons, the great industries, for their abuses, the way they abused their workers, they way they abused public trust, and so on.”
“It is neither our purpose nor our desire merely to "muckrake" Pittsburg or any other city.”
"Instead of an Article : About Pittsburg and, Incidentally, about Editing a Magazine"
“The noun "muckrake" (literally, a rake for "muck," i.e., manure) rose out of the dung heap and into the realm of literary metaphor in 1684.”
“Come on, every year the Globe and the Herald muckrake the dozens of Boston Police officers whose overtime and detail pay pushes them over the $100K/year mark.”
“Irrespective of the director's stated intent (see my interview below) to not muckrake (for lack of a better phrase) he inadvertently does, while straddling a fine line, also inadvertently serving the company's interest, by structuring a grand apologia and cautionary note to the future.”
The Huffington Post: Michael Vazquez: Weekend Film: On Into Eternity
“CNN stop covering this moron just to muckrake Palin, practice some responsible journalism .... heck, even the liberals I know are getting tired of your sensationalism.”
“If you want to muckrake old business, let's talk about the Kennedy's and Marilyn Monroe or Chappaquiddik.”
“But there's a problem: if you are going to muckrake with science, you need to be able to refute scientific evidence which doesn't agree with your hypothesis.”
Trevor Butterworth: The Case Against Worrying About Phthalates in Children's Toys
“It's one thing to muckrake with our military under the guise of a threat to our nation's security, but that excuse went out the window years ago.”
Barack Obama Redefines the "Center" of our Nation's Defense Against Terror
“In the widely disseminated April speech, Roosevelt indicted a type of journalist who, he said, "never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muckrake, speedily becom [ing] not a help to society, not an incitement to good, but one of the most potent forces for evil.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘muckrake’.
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My Little Phonies
Names for the next generation of My Little Ponies. Inspired by Star's list.
juggernaught, flamboyant, cuddly maggot, astrobleme, agroof, windburn, poshlost, crucifer, feedbag, dunderwhelp, nebelwerfer, bliss ninny and 453 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1824 more...
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Go over
mollify, obstinate, obviate, occlude, onerous, obscure, paragon, pedantic, perfunctory, placate, placid, prodigal and 364 more...
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Rakes
rake, rakes, brakes, hale, as thin as a rake, rakehell, horserake, star-wheel rake, hand-rake, rake helly, A child sitting i..., sulky rake and 47 more...
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newGRE
mostly from magoosh
imbue, verge on, nonchalant, deliberate, timorous, futile, provisional, dissect, checked, tinged, alluring, visionary and 1046 more...
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List for Test Day
heresy, reversion, predilection, pedagogy, disparate, virtuous, refurbish, efficaciously, provenance, heckler, amorphous, epitome and 236 more...
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Webbie Debbie's
portend... omen.../whats to come
glum plumportend, sotto, azure, idly, glum, morose, sidelong, Mary Blair, rendering, dubious, winsome, humongous and 100 more...
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Critischism
Divisive devices; emissary of Momus.
peevology, pessimize, philippic, philopolemic, billingsgate, charientism, criticaster, ludification, flyting, miserabilism, misprize, admonish and 145 more...
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Papageno's Words, Pt. I
hobbledehoy, absquatulate, chthonic, prolix, ululate, internecine, verisimilitude, animadversion, concupiscence, vertiginous, cucullate, lucubrate and 1554 more...
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New GRE Preparation List
All the words which I encounter during my GRE studies. :)
rhetoric, errant, arrant, artless, artful, ephemeral, libel, rhapsody, cloy, conjecture, relegate, aberrant and 927 more...
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GRE words
ersatz, trope, obsequious, sycophantic, endemic, silviculture, impugn, indignant, squander, substantiate, repudiate, vindictive and 132 more...
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Gossiphoning
Psst!--Didja know?
nosy, snoopy, scuttlebutt, talebearing, echo chamber, tabloid, bruit, quidnunc, disinformation, rumor, interloper, meddler and 67 more...
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deleterious meanings
words that hurt people, words about hurting people.
Tweets
Looking for tweets for muckrake.

chained_bear Hence Teddy Roosevelt's public comment that spawned the label muckraker and the WordNet meaning above (though it's not phrased particularly well). Sep 21, 2009
hernesheir "A man could look no way but downwards, with a muckrake in his hands."
John Bunyan (1628-1688), Pilgrim's Progress Sep 19, 2009