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
Their proposition was to get the manufacturers Government contracts in return for a 3% rake-off.
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
Kennedy, having invited crooked dealing by his remark about the rake-off, was being approached about another crooked deal.
From The Social Gangster by Reeve, Arthur B. (Arthur Benjamin)
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
Some mow and rake off and burn outside the bed, then with a two horse cultivator dig up the paths and cultivate and get the ground in condition.
It was, he saw, necessary that he should explain the meaning of a "rake off," and he did so to his companion's entertainment.
From The Shuttle by Burnett, Frances Hodgson
Why didn't you rake off these dahlias as I told you to yesterday?
From The Heart's Kingdom by Daviess, Maria Thompson
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.
