1. 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. A toothed machine drawn by a horse, used for collecting hay or grain; a horserake.
3. A fissure or mineral vein traversing the strata vertically, or nearly so; called also rake-vein.
4. To collect with a rake; as, to rake hay; often with up; as, he raked up the fallen leaves.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. To search through; to scour; to ransack.
8. To scrape or scratch across; to pass over quickly and lightly, as a rake does.
9. 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. To use a rake, as for searching or for collecting; to scrape; to search minutely.
11. To pass with violence or rapidity; to scrape along.
12. The inclination of anything from a perpendicular direction; as, the rake of a roof, a staircase, etc. the inclination of a mast or funnel, or, in general, of any part of a vessel not perpendicular to the keel.
13. To incline from a perpendicular direction; as, a mast rakes aft.
14. A loose, disorderly, vicious man; a person addicted to lewdness and other scandalous vices; a debauchee; a roué.
15. To walk about; to gad or ramble idly.
16. To act the rake; to lead a dissolute, debauched life. a long-handled tool with a row of teeth at its head; used to move leaves or loosen soil a dissolute man in fashionable society gather with a rake; "rake leaves" level or smooth with a rake; "rake gravel" move through with or as if with a rake; "She raked her fingers through her hair" sweep the length of; "The gunfire raked the coast".
17. A raked stage or other surface is sloping, for example so that all the audience can see:
more clearly. The action takes place on a steeply raked stage.