Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive & transitive verb To slant or cause to incline from the perpendicular.
  • noun Inclination from the perpendicular.
  • noun The angle between the cutting edge of a tool and a plane perpendicular to the working surface to which the tool is applied.
  • noun The angle at which a roof is inclined.
  • noun The inclined edge of a pitched roof or the roof of a gable or dormer.
  • noun A long-handled implement with a row of projecting teeth at its head, used especially to gather leaves or to loosen or smooth earth.
  • noun A device that resembles such an implement.
  • intransitive verb To gather or move with or as if with a rake.
  • intransitive verb Informal To gain in abundance. Often used with in.
  • intransitive verb To smooth, scrape, or loosen with a rake or similar implement.
  • intransitive verb To move over or across swiftly or harshly.
  • intransitive verb To pull or drag (a comb or one's fingers, for example) over or through something, such as one's hair.
  • intransitive verb To scrape; scratch.
  • intransitive verb To aim heavy gunfire along the length of.
  • intransitive verb To use a rake.
  • intransitive verb To conduct a thorough search.
  • idiom (rake over the coals) To reprimand severely.
  • noun A usually well-to-do man who is dissolute or promiscuous.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A course, way, road, or path.
  • noun 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.
  • noun 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.
  • 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.
  • To give a rake to; cause to incline or slope.
  • To take a course; move; go; proceed.
  • In hunting:
  • Of a hawk, to range wildly; fly wide of the game.
  • Of a dog, to follow a wrong course. See the quotation.
  • noun An idle, dissolute person; one who goes about in search of vicious pleasure; a libertine; an idle person of fashion.
  • To play the part of a rake; lead a dissolute, debauched life; practise lewdness.
  • noun Inclination or slope away from a perpendicular or a horizontal line.
  • noun In coal-mining, a series of thin layers of ironstone lying so near each other that they can all be worked together.
  • In turpentining, to clear combustible material away from (the base of a tree), as a precaution against fire.
  • In salt-making, to remove the salt from (the evaporating-pans) to the draining-table.
  • noun A lean, meager person.
  • noun 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.
  • 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.
  • To collect as if by the use of a rake; gather assiduously or laboriously; draw or scrape together, up, or in.
  • To make minute search in, as if with a rake; look over or through carefully; ransack: as, to rake all history for examples.
  • To pass along with or as if with a scraping motion; impinge lightly upon in moving; hence, to pass over swiftly; scour.
  • 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.
  • To cover with earth raked together; bury. See to rake up, below.
  • 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.
  • To use a rake; work with a rake, especially in drawing together hay or grain.
  • To make search with or as if with a rake; seek diligently for something; pry; peer here and there.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To use a rake, as for searching or for collecting; to scrape; to search minutely.
  • intransitive verb To pass with violence or rapidity; to scrape along.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Origin unknown.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English raca; see reg- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for rakehell.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English raken, from Old English racian ("to direct, rule, govern, control; take a course or direction, go forward, move, run; hasten"), from Proto-Germanic *rakōnan (“to choose a direction, run”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃reǵ- (“to straighten, direct”). Cognate with Dutch raken ("to hit, touch, reach").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Shortening of rakehell, possibly from rake (etymology 2) ("to proceed rapidly")

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Old English raca, from Proto-Germanic *rakaz

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Old Norse rák ("trail"), from Proto-Germanic *rēkō, *rakan, *rakō, *rakōn (“file of tracks, line”), from Proto-Indo-European *(o)reg'-, *(o)reg'a- (“to straighten, direct”). Cognate with Icelandic rák ("streak, grazing"), Icelandic raka ("strip, series"), Norwegian røk ("grazing"), Norwegian rak ("wick"), Old English race, racu ("a run, riverbed").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word rake.

Examples

  • But by the next harvest I had it so constructed, as to be drawn by an iron bar so shaped, appended and supported on the underneath part of the carriage, as to admit of the machine turning in any direction, and the carriage would follow just as the two hind wheels of a wagon do; the carriage had a seat behind, and a thick, deep cushion in front, for the raker to press his knees against while removing the grain from the platform to his right hand, which he was enabled to do with apparent ease with a _rake of peculiar shape_; -- (it cannot be done with a rake of ordinary shape).

    Obed Hussey Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap Various

  • JACK: 'Tis a delicate age, by jingo, when the rake is the fine gentleman and the fine gentleman is the lady's favourite, egad.

    The Beau Defeated: or, The Lucky Younger Brother 1999

  • "Because we don't underestimate the international game," said Johnson, who had nine stitches running down the left side of her nose — courtesy of a face-rake from a New Zealander.

    USATODAY.com - Females take lead in USA basketball 2004

  • Having mentioned the word rake, I must say a word or two more on that subject, because young people too frequently, and always fatally, are apt to mistake that character for that of a man of pleasure; whereas, there are not in the world two characters more different.

    Letters to his son on The Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman 2005

  • For both of these a small, fine rake is the best cure.

    Gardening by Myself 1872

  • Having mentioned the word rake, I must say a word or two more on that subject, because young people too frequently, and always fatally, are apt to mistake that character for that of a man of pleasure; whereas, there are not in the world two characters more different.

    Complete Project Gutenberg Earl of Chesterfield Works Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield 1733

  • Having mentioned the word rake, I must say a word or two more on that subject, because young people too frequently, and always fatally, are apt to mistake that character for that of a man of pleasure; whereas, there are not in the world two characters more different.

    Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman, 1750 Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield 1733

  • Poker operates on something called the rake, which is a percentage of each hand that goes directly to the casino.

    HS Blog - Homeschool Blog 2008

  • About a third of the funds deposited by gamblers went to the poker companies as revenue, known as the "rake," prosecutors said.

    Eleven Charged in Federal Crackdown on Online-Poker Companies Alexandra Berzon 2011

  • About one-third of the funds deposited by gamblers went to the poker companies as revenue, known as the "rake," prosecutors said.

    Guilty Plea in Web-Poker Crackdown Chad Bray 2011

  • In poker the players win money from each other, so the casino’s cut is limited to the hourly rate it charges players to sit at the tables, or to the small, capped percentage (the ‘rake’) they take from players’ winnings.

    Paul Myerscough · Diary: Confessions of a Poker Player · LRB 29 January 2009 Paul Myerscough 2019

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • He might be Mulligan. All comely virgins. That brings those rakes of fellows in: her white.

    Joyce, Ulysses, 11

    January 7, 2007

  • I prefer the kind you use for leaves. :-)

    July 14, 2007

  • I like the other kind only in fiction!

    July 14, 2007

  • Men, some to Bus'ness, some to Pleasure take;

    But ev'ry Woman is at heart a Rake:

    Men, some to Quiet, some to public Strife;

    But ev'ry Lady would be Queen for life

    From Alexander Pope's Moral Essay II, 215-18

    December 15, 2007

  • apparently short for rakehell

    June 22, 2009

  • my rake's progress is thatched with obstacles

    June 22, 2009

  • "In hunting: (a) Of a hawk, to range wildly; fly wide of the game.

    Their talk was all of training, terms of art,

    Diet and seeling, jesses, leash and lure.

    "She is too noble," he said, "to check at pies,

    Nor will she rake; there is no baseness in her."

    Tennyson, Merlin and Vivien.

    (b) Of a dog, to follow a wrong course. See the quotation.

    All young dogs are apt to rake: that is, to hunt with their noses close to the ground, following their birds by the track rather than by the wind.

    Sportsman's Gazetteer, p. 466."

    --from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

    April 15, 2011

  • rastrillo

    September 30, 2013