thin as a rake
"thin-as-a-rake" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“thin as a rake” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 14
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Incredibly thin; at an unhealthy-looking level of thinness.
Corpus desk
Index EN-thin-as-a-rake · thin as a rake · English
thin as a rake · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-MEGA 14 letters
- VOW-5 5 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "T" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | thin as a rake |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 14 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “thin as a rake” in English
Rare enough to double-check
thin as a rake is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anadjective. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Incredibly thin; at an unhealthy-looking level of thinness.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for thin as a rake, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.
Etymologically, the entry records: Alteration of earlier lean as a rake, from Middle English lene as a rake; the last element in is potentially an modification of either Middle English *rak (“skinny animal”) (from Old Norse hrak) or rak (“rack”) after rake (“rake”), though it might merely re… The correct English form is thin as a rake, spelled T-H-I-N- -A-S- -A- -R-A-K-E.
Definition
- 1Incredibly thin; at an unhealthy-looking level of thinness.
Etymology
Alteration of earlier lean as a rake, from Middle English lene as a rake; the last element in is potentially an modification of either Middle English *rak (“skinny animal”) (from Old Norse hrak) or rak (“rack”) after rake (“rake”), though it might merely represent that word.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.