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rake

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English has three distinct words spelled rake: the garden tool, the slant of a ship's mast or a stage, and the dissolute man.[1][2][3]

Pronunciation

rake1 toothed tool

Etymology

The tool is inherited from Middle English rake,[5][6] inherited from Old English raca, also racu and earlier ræce,[7][8][3][2] from Proto-Germanic *rak- (“gather, heap up”).[8][1][3] It is cognate with Middle Dutch rāke, Old High German rehho (modern German Rechen), Old Norse reka (“spade, shovel”) and Gothic 𐍂𐌹𐌺𐌰𐌽 (rikan, “to heap up”).[7][8][3][2] Etymonline traces it to Proto-Indo-European *reg- (“to move in a straight line”), the root of right,[8][1][9] and Merriam-Webster and Barnhart compare Ancient Greek ὀρέγω (orégō, “to stretch out”).[2][3] The verb is raken, partly from the noun and partly borrowed from Old Norse raka (“to scrape, rake”).[7][3][9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

A toothed tool for drawing together hay or grass, or for levelling the ground: Old English, in the Corpus Glossary;[7] Barnhart dates ræce before 800 and raca about 1000.[3]

Semantic evolution

Already in Old English the word covered similar tools for other jobs,[7] and later a croupier's tool for drawing in money at the gaming table.[7][11] The phrase lean as a rake is in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (about 1405 in the manuscript),[7][5] and rake alone for a very thin person is in Skelton, before 1529.[7] The verb, to gather with a rake, is recorded from before 1325 in Genesis and Exodus,[7][3] and to rake in money or wealth from 1583.[7][8] From the 1630s it was also used of gunfire sweeping a ship or a line of troops from end to end.[8]

Timeline

  • before 800 – ræce, a rake.[3]
  • Old English – a toothed implement for gathering hay or levelling ground.[7]
  • before 1325 – verb, to gather with a rake.[7]
  • c. 1405 – lean as a rake, in Chaucer.[7]
  • before 1529 – a very thin person.[7]
  • 1583 – to rake in money.[7]
  • 1630s – of gunfire, to sweep along.[8]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A garden tool with a row of teeth or prongs across the end of a long handle, used to gather leaves or grass or to smooth soil.[2][11][7]
  2. A farm machine with rows of teeth or tines for gathering hay or straw.[11]
  3. Any similar tool, such as a croupier's tool for moving chips, or one for drawing ashes from a furnace.[11][7]
  4. thin as a rake: very thin.[7][5]

Verb

  1. To gather, collect or smooth with a rake: He raked the cut grass into piles.[2][7]
  2. To search through something carefully: She raked through the drawer for her passport.[2][7]
  3. To sweep a ship, troops or a position with gunfire along its length; to enfilade.[8][2]
  4. rake in: to gain money in large amounts.[7][8]

Word family

  • raker
  • rake-off
  • muckrake

rake2 slant, inclination

Etymology

The slant is of unknown or uncertain origin.[2][7][9][3] The noun comes from the verb, to slope.[7][9][3] Several dictionaries suggest a link with Middle High German ragen (“to project”) (modern German ragen),[7][1][10][12] and Barnhart compares Swedish raka (“to project, reach”) and Danish rage (“to protrude”), forms that may themselves come from German.[3][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of a ship's hull or timbers, to project at the bow or stern: about 1514, in measurements for a ship in the State Papers of Henry VIII.[7] The noun, the overhang of the hull at bow and stern beyond the keel, is recorded from before 1621, in William Strachey;[7] Barnhart dates the noun 1626 and the verb 1627.[3]

Semantic evolution

The word began as a shipbuilders' term for the overhang of the hull at bow and stern.[7][3] From before 1687 it was used of masts or funnels leaning back from the vertical,[7] and since 1722 of any slope.[7] In the 19th century it was applied to the slope of a theatre stage or auditorium (1802) and to the angle of a cutting tool (1888).[7][2] The adjective rakish, first suggested by the backward-leaning masts of fast sailing ships, was later linked to rake the dissolute man.[1][9]

Timeline

  • c. 1514 – verb, of a ship, to have a rake at bow or stern.[7]
  • before 1621 – noun, the overhang of a ship's hull.[7]
  • before 1687 – of a mast or funnel, to lean back.[7]
  • 1722 – to slope.[7]
  • 1802 – the slope of a stage or auditorium.[7]
  • 1888 – the angle of a cutting tool.[7]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A slant away from the vertical, as of a ship's mast or funnel, or the overhang of a ship's bow or stern.[2][7]
  2. A slope from the horizontal, as of a theatre stage or auditorium.[2][7]
  3. The angle between the cutting face of a tool and a line perpendicular to the work.[2][7]

Verb

  1. To lean or slope away from the vertical: The masts raked sharply aft.[2][7]
  2. To give a slope to something.[2][7]

rake3 dissolute man

Etymology

The dissolute man is a clipping from English rakehell.[7][8][2][3][9] Rakehell (1554) is perhaps an alteration, by association with the tool and with hell, of Middle English rakel (“hasty, rash, headstrong”),[3][8][2] probably from raken (“to go, proceed”), from Old English racian (“to go forward, hasten”).[8][3] The OED instead takes it from the phrase “to rake hell”.[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

A dissolute or immoral man: 1653, in Henry More's An Antidote Against Atheism, according to Barnhart;[3] the OED's first record is from 1693,[7] and Merriam-Webster dates it about 1687.[2]

Semantic evolution

The word was used of fashionable men of loose or dissolute life,[7][8] and by 1710–12 also of women of the same character.[7][8] Hogarth's engravings A Rake's Progress were published in 1735.[8] A verb, to live as a rake, is recorded from 1700,[7][2] and the adjective rakish from the 18th century.[9]

Timeline

  • 1554 – rakehell, the fuller form.[3]
  • 1653 – a dissolute man.[3]
  • 1693 – a fashionable man of dissolute habits.[7]
  • 1700 – verb, to live as a rake.[7]
  • 1710 – a woman of similar character.[7]
  • 1735 – Hogarth's A Rake's Progress.[8]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A man, usually a fashionable one, who lives a dissolute or immoral life; a libertine: In the novel the young rake gambles away his estate.[2][7][11]

Verb

  1. (rare) To live like a rake.[2][7]

Word family

  • rakish

Usage notes

A separate dialect verb rake, to move forward swiftly, to roam, or of a hawk to fly after its quarry, comes from Old English racian (“to go forward”).[2][11][10][7] It survives mainly in Scotland and northern England.[7][2]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  4. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  5. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  9. ^ a b c d e f g Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  10. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  11. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  12. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press