rager

American  

[ray-jer] / ˈreɪ dʒər /

noun

1. Slang. a party attended by a large number of people, especially students, and featuring copious amounts of alcohol.

   Your mom is letting you throw a legit rager in your backyard the day after graduation?

   If you're in a dorm, there's no better way to use up the flat beer from last night's rager than this easy biscuit recipe.

2. Slang: Vulgar. a powerful erection or state of extreme sexual arousal.

3. a person who frequently expresses violent or uncontrolled anger, often with little provocation and in the form of verbal abuse.

   All my kids had tantrums at the normal ages, but my third was a born rager.

   The immediacy of anger violently expressed means the rager is no longer thinking.

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Etymology

Origin of rager

First recorded in 1400–50; 1985–90 rager for def. 1; 2000–05 rager for def. 2; rag(e) ( def. ) + -er ⁷ ( def. )

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

rager

In fact, this rager was Hello Kitty–themed—with trippy visuals of the fluffy cat blaring behind the DJs—and was hosted by the Dave & Buster’s in Ontario, California, just over 35 miles outside Los Angeles.

From Slate ● Jun. 25, 2026

The older I get, the more I think the ideal birthday isn’t a rager or a bucket-list trip but a day that feels like how you’d like the rest of your year to feel.

From Salon ● Oct. 23, 2025

Anthropic’s problem might be that it’s the sober one at the AI rager.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 18, 2025

When Ysabel Jurado invited me to her staff appreciation party this past Saturday, I expected to walk into a well-earned rager.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 20, 2024

The word is the Icelandic geysir, gusher or rager, from the verb geysa, a derivative of gjosa, to gush.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 8 "Germany" to "Gibson, William" by Various