Old English raca, racu, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch raak and German Rechen, from a base meaning 'heap up'; the verb is partly from Old Norse raka 'to scrape, shave'.

• The rake used by gardeners to smooth soil or gather leaves in autumn is an Old English word, from a root meaning ‘heap up’. Thin as a rake is a comparison used since Geoffrey Chaucer's day. The phrases rake over old coals and rake over the ashes come from the idea of searching through a dead or dying fire to see if a spark remains. For reviving memories the expression came into use in the USA in the mid 19th century. A fashionable, rich but immoral man can also be known as a rake. This is an abbreviation of the old word rakehell (mid 16th century), which had the same meaning: the original idea was of the kind of sinful person likely to be found if you searched through Hell with a rake. A rake's progress is a progressive deterioration, especially through self-indulgence—A Rake's Progress was a series of engravings by the 18th-century artist William Hogarth, which depicted the progression of the rake from wealthy and privileged origins to debt, despair, and death on the gallows.

Mid 17th century: abbreviation of archaic rakehell in the same sense.

Early 17th century: probably related to German ragen 'to project', of unknown ultimate origin; compare with Swedish raka.

Early 20th century (originally Scots and northern English): from Old Norse rák 'stripe, streak', from an alteration of rek- 'to drive'. The word was in earlier use in the senses 'path, groove' and 'vein of ore'.

Late Middle English: origin uncertain; perhaps an alteration of rag¹ or from obsolete or Scots rake 'a rush, a run'.