rake up

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

rake up (third-person singular simple present rakes up, present participle raking up, simple past and past participle raked up)

1. (transitive, intransitive, figurative) To bring up or uncover (something), as embarrassing information, past misdeeds, etc.
2. (transitive, figurative, obsolete) To cover up, to hide (like covering live embers by raking ashes over them).
   • 1606, Ben Jonson, Volpone, Dedication, in Gifford’s 1816 edition volume III pages 163–164:

     As for those that will (by faults which charity hath raked up, or common honesty concealed) make themselves a name with the multitude, or, to draw their rude and beastly claps, care not whose living faces they intrench with their petulant styles, may they do it without a rival, for me! I choose rather to live graved in obscurity, than share with them in so preposterous a fame. Nor can I blame the wishes of those severe and wise patriots, who providing the hurts these licentious spirits may do in a state, desire rather to see fools and devils, and those antique relics of barbarism retrieved, with all other ridiculous and exploded follies, than behold the wounds of private men, of princes and nations:

3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see rake.