thin as a rake
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Meaning · English
Incredibly thin; at an unhealthy-looking level of thinness.
Where it’s used:
Used
American English
Examples
He went as thin as a rake, and deathly pale then for a couple of weeks.
Tuberculosis as a child had kept Billy out of the war, but he was now a fit twenty - six year old, as tall as Yanto, but as thin as a rake.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Adapted from English Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30 via kaikki.org).
Common questions
What does “thin as a rake” mean?
Incredibly thin; at an unhealthy-looking level of thinness.
Is “thin as a rake” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.