Other forms: rakes
A rake is the long-toothed garden tool for gathering fallen leaves. Rake the leaves, a garden rake, rake it flat.
A leaf rake is springy and fanned where a soil rake is rigid and short-toothed, and using the wrong one is why the job feels hard. To rake in money means to gather it fast. A rake is also an old word for a man who lived scandalously.
1nounrakeA long-toothed tool for gathering leaves.
“He used a rake to gather the fallen leaves into a big pile.”
rake is a tool.
Old English raca names the tool, from a Germanic root about gathering or scraping together.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₃reǵ- — to straighten, right oneself
Proto-Germanic
*rakō
Old English
raca
Middle English
rake
English, today
rake
Built from
From Middle English rakeraak, rak, from Old English raca, racu, ræce (“tool with a row of pointed teeth, rake”), from Proto-Germanic rakō, rekô (“tool with a row of pointed teeth, rake”), from Proto-Indo-European h₃reǵ- (“to straighten, right oneself”). 2 The English word is cognate with Danish rage chiefly regional, Middle Dutch rāke, rēke (modern Dutch raak, reek both regional, riek (“pitchfork, rake”)), Middle Low German rāke, racke (modern German Low German Raak (“rake; poker”)), Old High German rehho, rech (Middle High German reche, modern German Rechen (“rake”)), Old Norse reka (“shovel”) (modern Icelandic reka (“shovel”)), Old Saxon recho, gmq-osw raka (modern Swedish raka (“rake; (long) straight section of a road”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA