rake [OE] 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 [M16th]: 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 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.