a share or amount taken or received illicitly, as in connection with a public enterprise.
a share, as of profits.
a discount in the price of a commodity.
We got a 20 percent rake-off on the dishwasher.
1885–90, noun use of verb phrase rake off
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
But the men with no fingerprints won’t permit it, those athletic directors and presidents who have subverted college athletics into a rake-off while pretending to govern them.
From Washington Post • Feb. 21, 2019
The charge: Abdulgani was involved in a $130,000 rake-off from the firms that printed the 43 million ballots for last year's Indonesian elections.
From Time Magazine Archive
The gamblers from Genoa stopped paying their rake-off to the government.
From Time Magazine Archive
Their proposition was to get the manufacturers Government contracts in return for a 3% rake-off.
From Time Magazine Archive
"There is a rake-off for this one somewhere," he thought.
From The Title Market by Soper, J. H. Gardner
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
