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Rake   Listen
verb
Rake  v. t.  (past & past part. raked; pres. part. raking)  
1.
To collect with a rake; as, to rake hay; often with up; as, he raked up the fallen leaves.
2.
Hence: To collect or draw together with laborious industry; to gather from a wide space; to scrape together; as, to rake together wealth; to rake together slanderous tales; to rake together the rabble of a town.
3.
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; as, to rake a lawn; to rake a flower bed.
4.
To search through; to scour; to ransack. "The statesman rakes the town to find a plot."
5.
To scrape or scratch across; to pass over quickly and lightly, as a rake does. "Like clouds that rake the mountain summits."
6.
(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.
To rake up.
(a)
To collect together, as the fire (live coals), and cover with ashes.
(b)
To bring up; to search out and bring to notice again; as, to rake up old scandals.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rake" Quotes from Famous Books



... "fruitless solicitude." Cunningham gives December as the month of his birth; this is a mistake; so also is his notice of the painter's introduction of the Virago into his picture of the "Modern Midnight Conversation." No female figure appears in this subject. It is in the third plate of the "Rake's Progress" the woman alluded to is introduced. A small critic might here find a fit subject for vituperation, and loudly condemn Cunningham as a writer who was too idle to examine the works he was describing; pouncing on his minute ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... battle-axe in his hand, but warding off his opponent's spear he cleft his skull with so terrible a blow that the handle of his axe was shattered in his grasp. At the opening of the battle the English archers were thrown forward to rake the Scottish squares, but they were without support and were easily dispersed by a handful of horse whom Bruce held in reserve for the purpose. The body of men-at-arms next flung themselves on the Scottish front, but their charge was embarrassed by the narrow space along which the line ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... betwixt the moss And gum that locked our friend in limbo, A spider had spun his web across, And sat in the midst with arms akimbo: So, I took pity, for learning's sake, And, de profundis, accentibus laetis, Cantate! quoth I, as I got a rake; And up I fished his ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... not try to rake up such things. You know that the man bore an excellent character for many years in the army, and you had better be satisfied with that,' said Miss Jane for once in her life, as if to provoke Gillian, not on ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... most prosaic kind of villain. We scarcely ever find in Browning a defence of those obvious and easily defended publicans and sinners whose mingled virtues and vices are the stuff of romance and melodrama—the generous rake, the kindly drunkard, the strong man too great for parochial morals. He was in a yet more solitary sense the friend of the outcast. He took in the sinners whom even sinners cast out. He went with the hypocrite and had ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... and scales, exclaiming: "What in the world do you suppose can be the matter with me?" She had been a beautiful woman, a "belle" of "Miss Margaret's" day; she had married a man who was rich and handsome and witty—and a rake. Now he was drunk all the time, and two of his children had died in hospital, and another had arms that came out of joint, and had to be put in plaster of Paris for months at a time. His wife, the one-time darling of society, would lie on her couch and ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair

... answered Jacob, who was the eldest son of Tresidder's "head man" and the worst rake in the parish. "Lev us ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking

... bank. Doubleyear and the boy were now struggling almost in the middle of the canal with the body of the man swirling about between them. They would inevitably have been drowned, had not old Peggy caught up a long dust-rake that was close at hand—scrambled down up to her knees in the canal—clawed hold of the struggling group with the teeth of the rake, and fairly brought the whole to land. Jem was first up the bank, and helped up his two heroic companions; after which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... fringing the land within, and another dark strip fringing the barren Eilean Chaisteil outside,—lay the Betsey, looking wonderfully diminutive, but evidently a little thing of high spirit, taut-masted, with a smart rake aft, and a spruce outrigger astern, and flaunting her triangular flag of blue in the sun. I pointed first to the manse, and then to the yacht. The minister shook ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... land, from the verb riuten (reuten), corresponding to Low Ger. roden, and related to our royd, a clearing (Chapter XII). This word is apparently not connected with our root, though it means to root out, but ultimately belongs to a root ru which appears in Lat. rutrum, a spade, rutabulum, a rake, etc. ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley

... Allotment expression in utter perfection. (It's been in People of Position, Mayfair Murmurs, and several other weeklies.) I'm standing in my potato-patch (my Allotment toilette is finished off by a pair of enthralling little hob-nailed boots!) and I'm holding a rake and a hoe and a digging-fork in one hand and a garden-hose in the other; there's a wheel-barrow beside me, and I'm looking at the potato-plants with the true Allotment smile, my dearest. I sent a copy of this picky to Norty, and under it I wrote those famous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various

... to keep off the flies. The minister stood in the hay-field, without hat or cravat, coat or waistcoat, panting and smiling. Phillis had been leading the row of farm-servants, turning the swathes of fragrant hay with measured movement. She went to the end—to the hedge, and then, throwing down her rake, she came to me with her free sisterly welcome. 'Go, Paul!' said the minister. 'We need all hands to make use of the sunshine to-day. "Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might." It will be a healthy change of work for thee, lad; and I find best ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... four feet, with one-foot alleys between. Break all lumps with the spade, and work the surface to a regular and finely crumbled texture. Light soil should be trodden over to consolidate it, and then the surface may be carefully touched with the rake to prepare it for the seed. March and April are the usual months for spring sowing, although in mild districts seed is sometimes put in as early as January. Space the rows from nine to twelve inches apart, according to the character of the sort and the size of bulbs required. The ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... obliged to you for the plowing, but I'll be out at about nine o'clock and I'll bring my own spade and hoe and rake and things. I think I'll take those two young white lilacs that are crowded over by the fence in the front yard to start the garden. Don't you think lilacs would be a lovely corner for a garden like ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... Gradually their different powers separated them from each other. Archie came first, Eddie next, and Junkie brought up the rear. On nearing the field the first wrenched a stake out of a fence; the second caught up a rake, that had been left by the haymakers; and the last, unscrewing the butt of his rod, broke the line, and flourished the weapon as a cudgel. They all three leaped into the field one after another, and bore courageously down on the bull, being ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... found seven thousand. During the reign of King James the First, an act was passed 'For the preventing and avoiding the great abuse of the holy name of God in stage-plays.' Addison condemned the theatre 'for ridiculing religion, and for representing the rake and debauchee as the true gentleman.' It is vain to attempt to defend the ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... enemy off the Col di Lana trench by trench, and this was the task I set myself to toward the end of July. What made the task an almost prohibitive one was the fact that the Austrian guns from Corte and Cherz—which we were in no position to reduce to silence—were able to rake us unmercifully. Every move we made during the next nine months was carried out under their fire, and there is no use in denying that we suffered heavily. I used no more men than I could possibly help using, and the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... job he started was left undone. He was quite unequal to the harder part of the work, and the scouts, both kind and observant, could see that, and were content to let him gather and pile the fallen lumber and sometimes to rake up the smaller pieces for their evening fire, which he looked forward to with keen delight. What was the matter with him, they did not know. But this they did know, that he was their friend and that he took a kind of childish delight ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... warranted (by a pedigree as long as your arm) to grow into a Pekinese. It was Celia's idea to call him Bingo; because (a ridiculous reason) as a child she had had a poodle called Bingo. The less said about poodles the better; why rake up ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne

... will rot at sea, or if laid up high and dry, will strain, warp and dry-rot; money, if kept by us, yields no rent and is liable to loss; if invested, is liable to depreciation of the particular kind of stock. Strike, says the smith, the iron is white; keep the rake, says the haymaker, as nigh the scythe as you can, and the cart as nigh the rake. Our Yankee trade is reputed to be very much on the extreme of this prudence. It takes bank-notes, good, bad, clean, ragged, and saves itself by the speed with which it passes them off. Iron cannot rust, nor ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... contemptible fishing boat in the Bay of Biscay, when she appears on the horizon, receives the notice of all hands—the old as well as the young. And when we pass a sister ship, the Aretino or the Cosimo or the Angelo; in mid-ocean, we talk about her and criticise her, and rake out her past history, for days. I sometimes think, from hints the Mate drops, that our own Benvenuto has a past, a St. John's Wood past I mean, not a Haymarket past. But he will have no talk by others against the ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... written, and plays that were acted, were coarse and wicked, and the people who read these books and watched these plays led coarse and wicked lives. And now a rollicking soldier, noisy, good-hearted Dick Steele, "a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes"* made up his mind to try to make things better and give people something sweet and clean to read daily. The Tatler, especially after Addison joined with Steele in producing it, was a great success. But, as time went on, although it continued to ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... of a number of alterations being thought of, and set about, not one of which is ever known to be finished by those who begin them. It consists of everybody wanting the rake at the same moment, and of nobody being willing to use the other tools, which they call stupid and useless things. It consists of a great many plants being moved from one place to another, when they are in full flower, and dying in consequence. (But ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty

... me help you to-day, we could take the show to the fete and simply rake it in. It's a splendid way of winning your bet, too. Oh, booth, isn't it obvious that you've ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... Harris returned with the rake and cheerfully inquired: "Anything else tonight, Mr. Cuthbert?" Matthew took his courage in both hands and replied: "Well now, since you suggest it, I might as well—take—that ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... is really trying to study out its owner. Whinnie, I know, won't help him much. And I refuse to rise to his gaudiest flies. So he's still puzzling over what he regards as an anomaly, a farmerette who knows the difference between De Bussey and a side-delivery horse-rake, a mother of three children who can ride a pinto and play a banjo, a clodhopper in petticoats who can talk about Ragusa and Toarmina and the summer races at Piping Rock. But it's a relief to converse about something besides ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... effete we are, How like a flock of silly sheep who merely baa and bleat we are. And how "this petty little land," which prates so much of loyalty, Is nothing but a laughing-stock to Pittsburg Iron-Royalty. How titles make a man a rake, a drunkard, and the rest of it, While plain (but wealthy) democrats in Pittsburg have the best of it. How, out in Pennsylvania, the millionnaires are panting (Though there's something always keeps them fat) for monetary banting. How free-born citizens complain, with many Yankee ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various

... understrappers of the Colonial office, an ear mark that will stick to the feller for ever! Well, when they go to make a saint at Rome, and canonize some one who has been dead so long he is in danger of being forgot, the cardinals hold a sort of court-martial on him, and a man is appointed to rake and scrape all he can agin him, and they listen very patiently to all he has to say, so as not to do things in a hurry. He is called "the devil's advocate," but he never gained a cause yet. The same form used to be gone ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... what he's difficult to please with his Tops," said Mr. Rake, factotum to the Hon. Bertie Cecil, of the 1st Life Guards, with that article of hunting toggery suspended in his right hand as he paused, before going upstairs, to deliver his opinions with characteristic weight and vivacity to the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... remarkable marital phenomenon, to portray which, one single detail will be amply sufficient. When he used to go to the country, this husband never went to bed without secretly raking over the pathways of his park, and he had a special rake for the sand of his terraces. He had made a close study of the footprints made by the different members of his household; and early in the morning he used to go and identify the tracks that had been ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... Fortescue—for everybody knew how devoted Anita was to her father and Broussard considered the C. O. as a lion in his path. Of course, the old curmudgeon, as Broussard in his own mind called the Colonel, would rake up a lot of imaginary objections—he always was a martinet, and would be a stiff proposition to master in the present emergency. Broussard was tolerably certain of Mrs. Fortescue's assistance, who was an open and confessed sentimentalist, ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell

... knows her," said the boy, his thin body shaking. "Look at him, damn him! See his deep chest, that conqueror's walk, the easy, confident, male pride of him: a true-born, natural rake—the Toreador all over!" ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... he seen Hazel. The place looked wintry enough to-day, with its bare trees, and here and there the remnant of a light snow that had fallen lately; but the dropped leaves were carried away, and the sweep shewed fresh touches of the rake; everything was in perfect order. Dingee ushered the visiter into the great drawing-room, to warm himself by a corresponding fire; and there in a minute Hazel joined him, looking grave and flushed. The doctor had not sat down; he turned to face her ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... seen a panther spit and spring when a keeper shoved it out of the way with the cleaning rake? There is no beast in the world with whom it is more dangerous to play tricks. Yet in that dark corner, with the lantern held purposely so that it should not dazzle the panther's eyes, the Gray Mahatma stirred the beast with his toe and drove him away as carelessly and incautiously ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... are cast up by the waves, and collected at ebb-tide. Sometimes the searchers wade into the sea, furnished with nets at the end of long poles, by means of which they drag in the sea-weed containing entangled masses of amber; or they dredge from boats in shallow water and rake up amber from between the boulders. Divers have been employed to collect amber from the deeper waters. Systematic dredging on a large scale was at one time carried on in the Kurisches Haff by Messrs Stantien and Becker, the great amber merchants of Konigsberg. At the present ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... rake Hesperus had called for his breeches, and, having well rubbed his drowsy eyes, prepared to dress himself for all night; by whose example his brother rakes on earth likewise leave those beds in which they had slept away the day. Now Thetis, the good housewife, began to put on the pot, ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... The story, the moral, in both is nearly the same. The wild course of riot and extravagance, ending in the one with driving the Prodigal from the society of men into the solitude of the deserts, and in the other with conducting the Rake through his several stages of dissipation into the still more complete desolations of the mad-house, in the play and in the picture, are described with almost equal force and nature. The levee of the Rake, which forms the subject of the second plate in the series, is almost a transcript of Timon's ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... nearest to real woodcraft. This is made in the side of a bank by burrowing out a hole, with a smoke outlet in the rear. A hot fire built inside will bake the clay and hold it together. To use this oven, build a fire in it and when the oven is hot, rake out the coals and put in your bread or meat on flat stones. Close the opening with another stone and keep it closed long enough to give the oven a chance. This method is not recommended to beginners who are obliged to eat what they cook, ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... others might see that you had my confidence; but I said nothing of who you were nor where you came from; and, if they inquire, they will know nothing but that you come commended by the ambassadors. Very well then; you must go about freely amongst the Jesuits, and rake together any evidence that you can that may be of use to them if the affair should ever be made public; and yet they must know nothing of the reason—I lay that upon you. And you must mix freely in taverns and coffee-houses, especially among the smaller gentry, and hear ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... like Jack Rake, Who every fair flower his own would make. And thinks there can be no favor nor fame, But one may straightway pluck the same. But 'twill ...
— Faust • Goethe

... he said, "same as there's a law about losin' them! My house is a sample-book," he said. "On them there walls—all stuck up like that—I've got a sample of most every mind in the village!—People give 'em to me themselves," he said. "They let me rake out their trash barrels every now and then. They don't know what they're givin.'—Now, ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... and the anchorite, The martyr and the rake, Deftly He fashions each aright, Its vital part ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle

... was changed to be no sweeter than candy and sugar, a language traded for tobacco and very likely for anything not used in any original occupation, a language that is so fit to be seen exasperated and reduced and even particular, a language like that has the whole rake that makes the grass that is ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein

... or crow-pees, as they were vulgarly called, whose duty it was to watch the cards and gather or rake in the money ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... the gunners to fire straight into the Hampshire's hull; sharpshooters were to rake the decks of the two off-standing English ships, and the Indians were to stand ready to board. Two hours passed in sidling and shifting; then the death grapple began. Ninety dead and wounded Frenchmen rolled on the Pelican's blood-stained ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... upon his knee and putting her beautiful arms about his neck. "They take life seriously, and life is a joke. Besides, you are going to be Count Lucien de Rubempre. I will wheedle the Chancellerie if there is no other way. I know how to come round that rake of a des Lupeaulx, who will sign your patent. Did I not tell you, Lucien, that at the last you should have Coralie's dead body ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... Wilts men raked the moon yet out of the pond? Did they lend thee their rake, Tib, that thou hast raked up a couple of green Forest palmerworms, or be they the sons of the man in the moon, raked out and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and contented as princes, nay, more so, for they have no cares to trouble them. They proffer us their tobacco tins, accepting ours in return, touching their caps as they do so; then the cigarette, deftly rolled, is lit by a glowing ember, which they rake from the fire, and the now burning cigarette is handed to us to light from. Again we all touch our caps, for it is rigid etiquette, in accepting a light, to acknowledge the courtesy by a half military salute. In the corner the calf will moan, and we, now half asleep, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... fortune. Alice will be as comfortable as you can make her, and I wish you both joy from all my heart, and I believe you will be happy. Miss Melville will be as comfortable and happy as we can make her till she chooses a home for herself. Why wish to rake up old stories for no good end whatever? I dare say the story is true. I said to Hogarth when he and Miss Melville consulted me about the first letter she wrote, that for the very reason she claimed to be his mother I believed she was ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... false light that had lured him reached The Dreamer at Fordham. He held a letter addressed to him in the familiar handwriting of Helen Whitman long in his hand without opening it. This flame was burned out, he told himself—why rake its cold ashes? Yet he felt that nothing that she could say would have power to disturb his new peace. Still the Mother, though she kept her own counsel, trembled for herself and for him as she was aware (without looking up from her sewing) ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... any one else as likely to have been guilty. Likely! he might almost have said as possible to have been guilty. "I have a very great mind," he growled to himself, "to send for Butterby, and let him rake it all up again!" The uncertainty vexed him, and it seemed as if the affair was never to have an end. "What, if I show Arthur Channing the letter first, and study his countenance as he looks at it? I may gather something from that. I don't fancy he'd be an over good actor, as ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... see her?' he thought, 'or ask her to come down here? What's her life been? What is it now, I wonder? Beastly to rake up things at this time of day.' Again the figure of his cousin standing with a hand on a front door of a fine olive-green leaped out, vivid, like one of those figures from old-fashioned clocks when ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... June. The long days of summer came, with more and more work to be done in the fields, and work that was ever hotter and hotter. Wiseli felt this keenly when her cousin Gotti called her out to help with the haymaking, and the heavy rake was so hard for her to lift; or, worse still, to handle the clumsy wooden fork when the hay needed spreading in the sun ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri

... of subtle Politicians, the 243chicanery of corrupted Courts, and the flattery of cringing Parasites! Hence satirical books and prints, under temperate regulations, check the dissoluteness of the great. Hogarth's Harlot's and Rake's Progress have contributed to reform the different classes of society—nay, it has even been doubted by some, whether the Sermons of a Tillotson ever dissuaded so efficaciously from lust, cruelty, and intemperance, as the Prints of an ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... gardening—who are repelled, indeed, by its prosaic accompaniments, the dirt, the manure, the formality, the spade, the rake, and all that—love flowers nevertheless. For such these plants are more than a relief. Observe my Oncidium. It stands in a pot, but this is only for convenience—a receptacle filled with moss. ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... her sake he could give up a way of life that had already produced the gravest lesions on his liver and nervous system. His imagination presented him with idyllic pictures of the life of the reformed rake. He would never be sentimental with her, or silly; but always a little cynical and bitter, as became the past. Yet he was sure she would have an intuition of his real greatness and goodness. And in due course he would confess things ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... of the fallow should be burnt off and logged up in July, the rail-cuts split into quarters and drawn off to the site of the fences, ready for splitting into rails. After the log-heaps are burnt, you should either spread the ashes or rake them while hot into heaps, if you intend to make potash,* with which, by the by, I should advise the new-comer to have nothing to do until he has made himself thoroughly ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland

... the King at Court she would see him elsewhere. When George took his daily ride he was sure to meet or overtake Lady Sarah, attired in some bewitching costume; or to see her daintily plying her rake among the haymakers in the meadows of Holland House, a picture of rustic beauty well-calculated to make ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... Norah came to the kitchen door and blew the great tin dinner horn. Hiram promptly unhitched "Old Dolly" from the hay rake and started for the house. "I may as well haul the roller along and put it under cover," he said to himself, as he ...
— Dew Drops, Vol. 37. No. 16., April 19, 1914 • Various

... cousin when she entered upon her post, "do as you like with the whole house, but let my little study alone. Let it look as if it had been stirred up with a garden-rake—that little room is my territory, and no disgrace to you, my dear, if the dust rises in ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... heard defended, but only by men who are supposed to have had a large experience of the world, and who, perhaps, on that account, are not the best judges of female delicacy. "Every woman," as Pope says, "may be at heart a rake"; but it is for the interests of the domestic affections, which are the very elements of virtue, to cherish the notion, that women, as they are physically more delicate than men, are ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt

... attack upon his purse, about which he is a little sensitive. As he has a great notion, however, of being considered a royster, he chucked her under the chin, played her off with rather broad jokes, and put on something of the rake-helly air, that we see now and then assumed on the stage, by the sad-boy gentleman of the old school. "Ah, your honour," said the girl, with a malicious leer, "you were not in such a tantrum last year, when I told you about the widow, you know who; but if you had taken a friend's advice, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... long and full of terror! When thou bring'st not to the weary With thy shades refreshing slumber, And sweet dreams to comfort him. Restlessly his thoughts are delving In the past's great heaps of rubbish, Where they rake up many fragments Of his former life, and nowhere Can his eyes abide with pleasure; Only gloomy spectres rise up, Which the sunlight soon would banish. Unrefreshed, next to the future Roves the mind from which sweet sleep flies; Forges plans, ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... character, important though its exculpation be to her, is not really the point of chief practical interest in this case. Suppose all Mr. Wood's defamatory allegations to be true—suppose him to be able to rake up against her out of the records of the Antigua police, or from the veracious testimony of his brother colonists, twenty stories as bad or worse than what he insinuates—suppose the whole of her own statement to be false, and even the whole of her conduct since she came under our observation here ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince

... not to rake up bygones if you will let them be," Claude answered with a sulky air, half assumed. "It was you ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... appear at the rooms of the players at the Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday teas which they inaugurated, and discuss the merits of the venture. Thus the Garrick Players were gradually introduced into the newspapers. Lane Cross, the smooth-faced, pasty-souled artist who had charge, was a rake at heart, a subtle seducer of women, who, however, escaped detection by a smooth, conventional bearing. He was interested in such girls as Georgia Timberlake, Irma Ottley, a rosy, aggressive maiden who essayed comic roles, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... other days Rachel weeping for her children Rack, leave not a, behind Rage, could swell the soul to Raggedness, looped and windowed Rags, the man forget not in Rain from heaven droppeth Rainbow, add another hue unto the Rake, woman is at heart a Ralph to Cynthia howls Rank is but the guinea's stamp Rat, I smell a Rattle, pleased with a Ravens, He that feedeth the Ravishment, divine, enchanting Ray, tints to-morrow with prophetic ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various

... you are making signs, too! And right! Of course! Nature is always right. Just two inches high and it's harvest for you. I can use a rake, and dried in the evaporator you bring me ten cents a pound; to the folks needing a tonic you are worth a small fortune. No doubt you cost that by the time you reach them; but I fear I can't gather you just ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter

... face—and there were moments when it seemed as though all the heads about the great horse-shoe below, bald, shaggy, sleek, close-thatched, or thinly latticed, were equipped with an additional pair of eyes, set at an angle which enabled them to rake her face as relentlessly ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... finished, slept till dinner time next day, so that he only made three steps and a jump from bed to table. Panurge was of a middle height, and had a nose like that of the handle of a razor. He was a very gallant and proper man in his person, and the greatest thief, drinker, roysterer, and rake in Paris. With all that, he was the best fellow in the world, and he was always contriving some mischief or other. Pantagruel, being pleased with him, gave him the castellany of Salmigondin, which ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... difficult, the country being well cleared and exposed to the enemy's view and fire, the roads all running at right angles to our lines, and, some of them at least, broad turnpikes where the enemy's guns could rake for two miles. Is it necessary now to add any statement as to the superiority of the Federal force, or the exhausted and shattered condition of the Confederates for a space of at least a mile in their very ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday

... We have taken a cottage four miles south of my office. A sixpenny omnibus will take me back at four o'clock daily, to my little haven. My Carrie is fond of a garden; and I shall find her, on summer afternoons, waiting at the gate for me, in her garden hat, and leaning upon the smartest little rake in the world. You, and Joe, and the Pugilistic Department fellows may laugh; but this is the happy life I have chalked out for myself. As I have told you, some men marry with their eyes shut; but I live only to congratulate myself on my sagacity. To ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold

... his teaching, he is not always gentle, but he is always sincere. He speaks soft words to persuade; but if that is not enough, he does not scruple to knock the muck-rake out of sordid hands with a fine, sudden stroke, if so he may make men look up from the rubbish under their feet to the flowers that bloom around them and the stars that glow above and the God that reigns ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... the truth, but you might think I was hard on 'Bije—on your father. I ain't. And I sympathize with the way he felt, too. But Jim did right, as I see it. He acted just as I'd want a son of mine to do. And.... Well, I cal'late we'd better not rake up old ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... rise and form, Hut, tent, landing, survey, Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable, Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition house, library, Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, porch, Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, waggon, staff, saw, jack-plane, mallet, wedge, rounce, Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor, Work-box, chest, stringed instrument, boat, frame, and what not, Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... farmhouses, with rustic beauties smiling at the windows and wiser fathers scowling at the doors,—on they ride. To the Royalists, these troopers are "Prince Robert and the hope of the nation";—to the Puritans, they are only "Prince Robber and his company of rake-shames." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... them have to rake and scrape a long time to gather together the ten dollars their steamer passage costs, and when one of them gets back he is a bankrupt forever after. Few Moors can ever build up their fortunes again in one short lifetime after so reckless an outlay. In order to confine the dignity of Hadji ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... way, guarantees the deal. They've made him believe it to be a good financial thing for the State and he can't see that they are going to buy cheap stock, fatten it on a low rate from the State and hand it over to the French Government at a fancy rake-off—and then leave him with the bag to hold when the time for settlement and complaint comes. There is a strong Republican party in this State and they're keeping quiet, but year after next, when Bill Faulkner comes up for re-election, downright illegality will be alleged, and he will ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess

... grew daily greater, and in society one talked of nothing but his lavish expenditure and his creditors. I know that the purses of forty women were at his disposal. I know, moreover, that he used to gamble like a prince, and I would never marry my waiting-maid to a gambler and a rake. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... do that, anyway?" he asked. "After the May was lost the insurance people settled without a complaint. Can they rake up that matter ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... two ways. On the one side were Antonius' services: it was undeniable that his generalship had ended the war. In the other scale were Mucianus' letters. Besides which, every one else seemed ready to rake up the scandals of his past life and inveigh against his vanity and bad temper. Antonius himself did his best to provoke hostility by expatiating to excess on his services, decrying the other generals as incompetent cowards, and stigmatizing ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... beggar; and as for the fashionable society which he saw, he saw it from my Lord Bagwig's side-table, whose flatterer and hanger-on he was known to be. Regarding Mrs. Barry, the lady of Castle Brady would make insinuations still more painful. However, why should we allude to these charges, or rake up private scandal of a hundred years old? It was in the reign of George II that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now; and do not the Sunday ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... presentable little person.' He was constitutionally indifferent to and contemptuous of women. But he imagined that it would please David to bring his wife; and he was perhaps tolerably certain, since no one, be he rake or savant, possesses an historical name and domain without knowing it, that it would please the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... already hard pressed; but they fought like men, led courageously by Peters, the sailing master. As Dolores cleft the sparkling water, speeding out to them like a gorgeous sprite of the waves, men tugged at gun-tackles to swing a piece around to rake their own decks, for Yellow Rufe and his ruffians had swept the forecastle clear of defenders. And Dolores reached the vessel, climbed over the low-listing rail nimbly as a jungle cat, at the instant when Sancho's boats ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... then.—I'll have 'em severely punished, the young depredators.—Grant, you'd better get a sharp knife and a light ladder, and cut off those broken boughs—the young villains—and tell Ike to bring a big rake and smooth out these footmarks. No; I'll tell him. You get the knife. I shall go to the police ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... supposed that we were to become stockholders in the Consolidated Companies, in which case we should have gained something at both ends; but Gorham evidently changed his mind about that, which leaves us nothing but the original rake-off." ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... rolled again. The spring is the best time to do this work, although if the fall be dry, it will answer nearly as well to do it at that time. The dryer the ground in preparing it for the seed, and for the sowing of the same, the better. In preparing a small plot of ground for a lawn, the spade, hand-rake, and small roller may be used in ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan

... insists on cratin' every last one of 'em and expressin' 'em along; and now he has all that alleged lettuce and parsley and carrots and so on set out in neat little rows; and when he ain't sprinklin' 'em with the hose or dosin' 'em with fertilizer, he's out there ticklin' 'em with a rake. ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... had a passionate liking for theatricals, and that the parts he generally filled were those of a young man or lady, in fast plays, he had unavoidably misunderstood the object with which he indulged in these amusements, to such a degree as to misjudge him for a young rake. About this time, he had been entertaining a wish to cultivate intimate relations with him, but he had, much to his disgust, found no one to introduce him, so when he, by a strange coincidence, came to be thrown in his ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... the importance of being kind and courteous to the Ainos whose hospitality I shall receive; and Ito is very indignant at this. "Treat Ainos politely!" he says; "they're just dogs, not men;" and since he has regaled me with all the scandal concerning them which he has been able to rake together in the village. ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... he muttered savagely; "they shall pay dearly for this. Hold your fire, men; do not discharge your ordnance until we are square athwart his stern. Then let him have it and rake ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... replied the inspector. "Oldish chap, gives his age as sixty-one. Five foot three and a half, thin as a rake, twenty-nine inch chest. Miserable sort of devil. Says he picked up the watch about a quarter of a mile from 'The Hollows' ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins

... my dear George, but sets up for a celebrated Rake-hell, as well as Gamester; he cou'd not have found out a more dextrous way to have made thee Heir to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... a thumb and finger down into the writhing wet mass of bees, drew out the queen, which by its size and shape he readily distinguished from the others, and began to rake the bees into ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish

... Primus, he wouldn't stick in a spade, unless they'd pay him aforehand. Ye see, Primus was up to 'em; he knowed about Gidger, and there wa'n't none on 'em that was particular good pay; and so they all jest hed to rake and scrape, and pay him down the twenty dollars among 'em; and they 'greed for the fust full moon, at twelve' o'clock at ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... know what it means to me, Miss Vanderpoel," he said, "but if you were a junior salesman you'd know. It's not only the sale—though that's a rake-off of fifteen dollars to me—but it's because it's YOU that's bought them. Gee!" gazing at her with a frank awe whose obvious sincerity held a queer touch of pathos. "What it must be to be ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... stern air, promptly interrupted the conversation. "It doesn't quite follow," he suggested. "You people don't, I regret to say, understand the destiny of this child. The fact is that even the old Hanlin scholar Mr. Cheng was erroneously looked upon as a loose rake and dissolute debauchee! But unless a person, through much study of books and knowledge of letters, so increases (in lore) as to attain the talent of discerning the nature of things, and the vigour of mind ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... her to hold up the mast a minute, while he drove in a peg to make it rake a little more. He was, evidently, thinking of no drowned father, and dreaming of no possible sea-caves, but acutely busy in fashioning a present reality; and yet he liked to hear Mara read, and, when she had done, told her that he ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... may be communicated by contagion or heredity should not marry. These diseases include: tuberculosis, syphilis, cancer, leprosy, epilepsy and some nervous disorders, some skin diseases and insanity. A worn-out rake has no business to marry, since marriage is not a hospital for the treatment of disease, or a reformatory institution for moral lepers. Those having a marked tendency to disease must not marry those of similar tendency. The marriage of cousins is not to be advocated. The blood relation ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton

... which the children are reading. The group at the right represents a blacksmith standing at the side of an anvil,—a large hammer in his right hand,—engaged in conversation with a farmer, who holds a rake. The costume of the village girls should be white dresses, decorated with flowers, and garlands on their heads. The gentlemen should be dressed in light pants, white vests, and dark coats. The Goddess of Peace has on a ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head

... accustomed to these wild vagaries on his master's part, for Valgrand was the most daring and inveterate rake it is possible to imagine. But while he was tidying up the litter in the room, after Valgrand had left him, the dresser ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... arose, and said "Good Night." Alone remained the drowsy Squire To rake the embers of the fire, And quench the waning parlor light; While from the windows, here and there, The scattered lamps a moment gleamed, And the illumined hostel seemed The constellation of the Bear, Downward, athwart the misty air, Sinking and setting toward the sun. Far off the village clock ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... broken. Let me tell you," he continued, "that Thackeray never showed me any ill-will for the harm I had done him, and I do not believe he felt any." Nor, I must add, did Venables show any ill-will to me for the gaucherie which had caused me to rake up this ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... The ragpicker began to rake over the ground, fished up some objects and various papers, shoved them into the sack and turning his gaze again ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... editor of the Sibirsky Vyestnik, N., a local Nozdryov, a drunkard and a rake, has come to ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... may abound," perverting the consolatory doctrine of Divine grace to their souls' destruction. "What! because Christ is a Saviour, wilt thou be a sinner! because His grace abounds, therefore thou wilt abound in sin! O wicked wretch! rake Hell all over, and surely I think thy fellow will scarce be found. If Christ will not serve their turn, but they must have their sins too, take them, Devil; if Heaven will not satisfy them, take them, Hell; devour them, burn them, Hell!" "Tell the hogs of this world what a hog-sty ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... little dairy compartment, built over a spring covered by a wooden trap-door, completed the furnishings of the floor. For the rest, the place was a fairly well-stocked tool-house; a scythe and a grindstone, snow-shovel and ladders were arranged compactly; a watering-pot and rake stood fresh from ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... hugged the authors as his bosom friends;**** that instead of asking for blows at the corners of the streets, he now bestowed them as plentifully as he begged them before.*** In short, that he was grown a mere rake; and had nothing left in him of old Jack except his spite to John ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... liberty and love were ours, Home, and a brood of lusty sons, The long, North sunlight and the flow'rs, How could we think about the guns, The searchlights on a wintry cloud, The seamen stern and bold, Since we were hurrying with the crowd To rake ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood



Words linked to "Rake" :   libertine, blood, scrape, grate, crease, move, rake handle, collect, slope, skim, pitch, gradient, scan, pull together, slant, garner, rake in, examine, croupier's rake, smooth, debauchee, rake up, profligate, rake-off, brush, rakehell



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