#rakehell

First attested in 1706, from the noun rake, "a debauched person, a scoundrel", and the adjectivizing suffix -ish, which is native to English from Proto-Germanic *-iska of the same usage, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *-iskos, also an adjectivizing suffix.

The noun rake specifically in reference to a person (and not the gardening tool) is first attested in the 1650s as a shortening of the noun rakehell, of the same meaning. Originally an adjective first attested in the 1540s, and used as a noun by the 1550s, rakehell is a word of uncertain origin, specifically of two possible origins.

The first possibility is that the word is an alteration of the Middle English adjective rakel, meaning "rash, hasty, headstrong", by influence of the phrase rake Hell (attested by the 1540s). The word rakel is most likely from the Middle English verb raken, "to proceed," which is from Old English racian (see Note 1 below), "to hasten, to go forward", which is of unknown origin.

The second possibility is that the word is actually just a conjoining of the phrase rake Hell, which means "to go over Hell thoroughly, to search through Hell (for something or someone)". In this case, a rakehell would be "a person who can be found by raking through Hell for them", or more succinctly, "an evil person, a villain".

Etymologically, the verb rake is from Old English raca, "to scrape things up into a pile", which is from Proto-Germanic *rak-, "to gather; to heap up", which in turn is from the Proto-Indo-European root *reg- (see Note 2 below), "to move in a straight line". The word Hell is also native to English and Germanic in origin, from Proto-Germanic *haljō, "the underworld", literally "concealed place", from the Proto-Indo-European root *kel-, "to cover up, to conceal".

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Notes:

1) Old English racian may or may not be the source of the Modern English verb race, "to move swiftly, to hasten". Most etymologies give the source for race as a Scandinavian borrowing from a word or words relating to a rush of water. This may also be the as-yet unknown source of Old English racian, but no solid connection has been made to date.

2) PIE *reg- is also the ultimate source of a plethora of other Modern English words, including regular, rule, regent, right, erect, and many more.

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Sources:

https://www.etymonline.com/word/rakish

https://www.etymonline.com/word/rake

https://www.etymonline.com/word/rakehell

https://www.etymonline.com/word/hell

https://www.etymonline.com/word/-ish

Rakehell, which was abbreviated to a rake #lostwords #obscurewords #logophilia

We are all probably familiar with the noun a rake in the sense of a dissolute character prone to womanising and gambling, examples of whose progress were followed to good effect by the likes of William Hogarth and Igor Stravinsky. What I was gloriously unaware of until recently was that it is an abbreviation of rakehell, a word that carried the same connotations. It probably owes its origin to…

A rat in a trap, that’s what. Zeiloby is a beautiful, charismatic, young-ish academic whose life has gone so spectacularly wrong that they are in the Rift, an area of inhospitable terrain contested but not claimed by its two neighbouring countries, filled with all manner of monsters and mayhem. Not only that, but they’ve had everything but the clothes they stand up in taken from them, several powerful interests are directing them in ways they daren’t or don’t wish to disobey, and they’ve got an extremely visible slave’s brand on their face. Also, they seem to have spent a lot of time lately being tied up and in imminent danger of being eaten.

Zeiloby hates everything about the area, their current life, and most of the people they interact with. They’re running on terror and automatic pilot, attempting to charm, manipulate or murder everyone around them while keeping up their studies (there’s a tenured academic in the town, meaning finishing their doctorate* is still not quite out of the bounds of possibility!) and trying not to die. The last person who touched them kindly, they were already committed to betraying.

There’s plenty more about them, but Zeiloby is nothing if not a repository of secrets and their game is on hiatus rather than over.