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
In the days when there were as many as 25 ships in the harbor, the capataces' rake-off amounted to $25,000 a week.
From Time Magazine Archive
The divine detectives who arrest Joseph K. are brassy louts who eat his breakfast, try to get a rake-off by sending out for his food, try to make off with his shirt and underwear.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
Nor was this just a grand-stand play; Maud got a rake-off, so they say.
From Poems for Pale People A Volume of Verse by Ranck, Edwin Carty
Their strategy for the next generation of personal technology is to control the ecosystem at every level, and to rake off a piece of all the financial transactions taking place there.
From Salon ● Jun. 2, 2010
He's trying to expose politicians who rake off the profits, and he recently unearthed three whistle-blowers who claim that Arroyo's husband, son and brother-in-law are involved.
From Time Magazine Archive
Rollo began to rake off the leaves with his fingers, and then sat down, and went to digging a hole in the sand.
From Rollo's Experiments by Abbott, Jacob
"As for me, I care little if they rake off this old gray head, ten or eleven years sooner than I should die in the course of nature."
From Heroines That Every Child Should Know Tales for Young People of the World's Heroines of All Ages by Various
And when I marry again I promise you I'll marry right, and," she laughed bitterly, "I guess I'll hand you the rake off which you're looking for.
From The Forfeit by Cullum, Ridgwell
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.
