rake

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A long-handled implement with a row of projecting teeth at its head, used especially to gather leaves or to loosen or smooth earth.
2. n. A device that resembles such an implement.
3. v. To gather or move with or as if with a rake: rake leaves; rake in the gambling chips.
4. v. To smooth, scrape, or loosen with a rake or similar implement: rake the soil for planting.
5. v. Informal To gain in abundance. Often used with in: a successful company that raked in the profits.
6. v. To search or examine thoroughly; ransack.
7. v. To scrape; scratch.
8. v. To aim heavy gunfire along the length of.
9. v. To use a rake.
10. v. To conduct a thorough search: raked through the files for the misplaced letter.
11. rake up To revive or bring to light; uncover: rake up old gossip.
12. idiom. rake over the coals To reprimand severely.
13. n. An immoral or dissolute person; a libertine.
14. v. To slant or cause to incline from the perpendicular: propeller blades that rake backward from the shaft; rake a ship's mast.
15. n. Inclination from the perpendicular: the rake of a jet plane's wings.
16. n. The angle between the cutting edge of a tool and a plane perpendicular to the working surface to which the tool is applied.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An implement of wood or iron, or partly of both, with teeth or tines for drawing or scraping things together, evening a surface of loose materials, etc. In its simplest form, for use by hand, it consists of a bar in which the teeth are set, and which is fixed firmly at right angles to a handle. Rakes are made in many ways for a great variety of purposes, and the teeth are inserted either perpendicularly or at a greater or less inclination, according to requirement. Their most prominent uses are in agriculture and gardening, for drawing together hay or grain in the field, leveling beds, etc. For farm-work on a large scale horse-rakes of many forms are used; the above figures represent the so-called sulky-rake.
2. n. An instrument of similar form and use with a blade instead of teeth, either entire, as a gamblers' or a maltsters' rake, or notched so as to form teeth, as a furriers' rake. See the quotations.
3. To gather, clear, smooth, or stir with or as if with a rake; treat with a rake, or something that serves the same purpose: as, to rake up hay; to rake a bed in a garden; to rake the fire with a poker or raker.
4. To collect as if by the use of a rake; gather assiduously or laboriously; draw or scrape together, up, or in.
5. To make minute search in, as if with a rake; look over or through carefully; ransack: as, to rake all history for examples.
6. To pass along with or as if with a scraping motion; impinge lightly upon in moving; hence, to pass over swiftly; scour.
7. Milit., to fire upon, as a ship, so that the shot will pass lengthwise along the deck; fire in the direction of the length of, as a file of soldiers or a parapet; enfilade.
8. To cover with earth raked together; bury. See to rake up, below.
9. To draw from oblivion or obscurity, as something forgotten or abandoned; bring to renewed attention; resuscitate; revive: used in a more or less opprobrious sense: as, to rake up a forgotten quarrel.
10. To use a rake; work with a rake, especially in drawing together hay or grain.
11. To make search with or as if with a rake; seek diligently for something; pry; peer here and there.
12. n. A course, way, road, or path.
13. To take a course; move; go; proceed.
14. In hunting:
15. Of a hawk, to range wildly; fly wide of the game.
16. Of a dog, to follow a wrong course. See the quotation.
17. To incline from the perpendicular or the horizontal, as the mast, stem, or stern of a ship, the rafters of a roof, the end of a tool, etc. See the noun.
18. To give a rake to; cause to incline or slope.
19. n. Inclination or slope away from a perpendicular or a horizontal line. The rake of a ship's mast is its inclination backward, or rarely (in some peculiar rigs) forward; that of its stem or its stern (the fore rake and the rake aft of the ship) is the slope inward from the upper works to the keel: also called hang. (See cut under patamar.) The rake of a roof is its pitch or slope from the ridge to the eaves. The rake of a saw-tooth is the angle of inclination which a straight line drawn through the middle of the base of the tooth and its point forms with a radius also drawn through the middle of the base of the tooth; of a cutting-tool, the slope backward and downward from the edge on either side or both sides. Rake in a grinding-mill is a sloping or want of balance of the runner, producing undue pressure at one edge.
20. n. In coal-mining, a series of thin layers of ironstone lying so near each other that they can all be worked together.
21. n. An idle, dissolute person; one who goes about in search of vicious pleasure; a libertine; an idle person of fashion.
22. To play the part of a rake; lead a dissolute, debauched life; practise lewdness.
23. n. A lean, meager person.
24. n. A local miners' term in Derbyshire, England, for veins of galena in joints in limestone, as contrasted with fault-fissures. The joints are often enlarged by the solution and removal of the walls, but they may be and usually are limited or cut off sharply by an underlying stratum. Also written rake-vein. Compare gash-vein.
25. In turpentining, to clear combustible material away from (the base of a tree), as a precaution against fire.
26. In salt-making, to remove the salt from (the evaporating-pans) to the draining-table.

Wiktionary

1. n. A garden tool with a row of pointed teeth fixed to a long handle, used for collecting grass or debris, or for loosening soil.
2. n. Ireland, slang a lot, plenty.
3. n. geology the direction of slip during fault movement. The rake is measured within the fault plane.
4. n. roofing the sloped edge of a roof at or adjacent to the first or last rafter.
5. n. rail transport a set of coupled rail vehicles, normally coaches or wagons.
6. n. cellular automata A puffer that emits a stream of spaceships rather than a trail of debris.
7. n. The scaled commission fee taken by a cardroom operating a poker game.
8. v. To use a rake on (leaves, debris, soil, a lawn, etc) in order to loosen, gather together, or remove debris from.
9. v. To search thoroughly.
10. v. To spray with gunfire.
11. v. To claw at; to scratch.
12. v. To gather, especially quickly (often as rake in)
13. v. intransitive To proceed rapidly; to move swiftly.
14. v. obsolete, transitive To guide; to direct
15. n. A man habituated to immoral conduct.
16. v. UK, dialect, dated To walk about; to gad or ramble idly.
17. v. UK, dialect, dated To act the rake; to lead a dissolute, debauched life.
18. n. provincial, Northern England a course; direction; stretch.
19. n. provincial, Northern England a range, stray.
20. v. provincial, Northern England To run or rove.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. An implement consisting of a headpiece having teeth, and a long handle at right angles to it, -- used for collecting hay, or other light things which are spread over a large surface, or for breaking and smoothing the earth.
2. n. A toothed machine drawn by a horse, -- used for collecting hay or grain; a horserake.
3. n. (Mining) A fissure or mineral vein traversing the strata vertically, or nearly so; -- called also rake-vein.
4. v. To collect with a rake; ; -- often with up.
5. v. To collect or draw together with laborious industry; to gather from a wide space; to scrape together
6. v. To pass a rake over; to scrape or scratch with a rake for the purpose of collecting and clearing off something, or for stirring up the soil
7. v. To search through; to scour; to ransack.
8. v. To scrape or scratch across; to pass over quickly and lightly, as a rake does.
9. v. (Mil.) To enfilade; to fire in a direction with the length of; in naval engagements, to cannonade, as a ship, on the stern or head so that the balls range the whole length of the deck.
10. v. To use a rake, as for searching or for collecting; to scrape; to search minutely.
11. v. To pass with violence or rapidity; to scrape along.
12. n. (Naut.) The inclination of anything from a perpendicular direction the inclination of a mast or funnel, or, in general, of any part of a vessel not perpendicular to the keel.
13. v. To incline from a perpendicular direction.
14. n. A loose, disorderly, vicious man; a person addicted to lewdness and other scandalous vices; a debauchee; a roué.
15. v. Prov. Eng. To walk about; to gad or ramble idly.
16. v. To act the rake; to lead a dissolute, debauched life.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a dissolute man in fashionable society
2. v. sweep the length of
3. n. degree of deviation from a horizontal plane
4. v. gather with a rake
5. v. scrape gently
6. v. move through with or as if with a rake
7. n. a long-handled tool with a row of teeth at its head; used to move leaves or loosen soil
8. v. level or smooth with a rake
9. v. examine hastily