rake (redirected from thin as a rake)

rake, farm implement consisting of a row of straight or curved teeth of metal or wood attached to a bar or frame. It is used for gathering hay or grain into piles; for clearing fields, lawns, and yards; and for stirring and spreading soil. Horse-drawn rakes first appeared in the early 19th cent. but were not used generally until later. Of the several types of modern power-drawn hay rakes, the side-delivery rakes, which gather hay into continuous windrows by a rolling action, are the most popular. These include a reel type, which has raking teeth attached to rotating bars, and a finger-wheel type, which has teeth attached to large wheels. Lesser used rakes include the dump rake, which creates piles, and the sweep rake, which gathers and hauls a heavy load directly to the stack.

Bibliography

See C. Culpin, Farm Machinery (11th ed. 1986).

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rake¹

1. a hand implement consisting of a row of teeth set in a headpiece attached to a long shaft and used for gathering hay, straw, leaves, etc., or for smoothing loose earth

2. any of several mechanical farm implements equipped with rows of teeth or rotating wheels mounted with tines and used to gather hay, straw, etc.

3. any of various implements similar in shape or function, such as a tool for drawing out ashes from a furnace

4. NZ a line of wagons coupled together as one unit, used on railways

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rake²

1. Nautical the degree to which an object, such as a ship's mast, inclines from the perpendicular, esp towards the stern

2. Theatre the slope of a stage from the back towards the footlights

3. Aeronautics

a. the angle between the wings of an aircraft and the line of symmetry of the aircraft

b. the angle between the line joining the centroids of the section of a propeller blade and a line perpendicular to the axis

4. the angle between the working face of a cutting tool and a plane perpendicular to the surface of the workpiece

5. a slanting ledge running across a crag in the Lake District