in the raw
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Unprocessed or unrefined
Literally: in an uncooked state
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
In fact, a large part of the syntactic complexity of the sentence comes from the use of prepositional phrases.
Can I just turn over let's look at th the other side of that coin, right, because it has all the explanations er as to why agriculture, agricultural trade has declined in relative terms right.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “in the raw” mean?
Unprocessed or unrefined Literally: in an uncooked state
Is “in the raw” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.