English

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Etymology

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rake +‎ -ery

Pronunciation

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Noun

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rakery (countable and uncountable, plural rakeries)

  1. Debauchery; lewdness.
    • a. 1734, Roger North, The Life of the Right Honourable Francis North:
      the rakery and intrigues of the lewd town
    • 1979, Roald Dahl, My Uncle Oswald:
      Already, you see, I had begun to acquire a taste for rakery and wenching among the London debutantes.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for rakery”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)