Word.ws English Dictionary

step on a rake

step on a rake verb: to step on the tines of a garden rake, causing the handle of the rake to rise from the ground rapidly, striking the person walking in the face.

Verb

step on a rake (third-person singular simple present steps on a rake, present participle stepping on a rake, simple past and past participle stepped on a rake)

  1. (literally) To step on the tines of a garden rake, causing the handle of the rake to rise from the ground rapidly, striking the person walking in the face.
  2. (idiomatic) To fall victim to an avoidable (usually self-caused) hazard or error.
    • Our President [Franklin Roosevelt] stepped on a rake last week, and the handle hopped up and hit him in the eye. He then blamed the press for leaving the rake lying around.1939, Editor & Publisher, volume 72, page 3
    • We passed this revolving door legislation here. We have done several things we thought were to tighten the system so that we would obviate any other scandals or improprieties. It was sort of like stepping on a rake here — this thing flies up and hits you in the face. We thought we had done a pretty...1988 June 29, William L. Dickinson, Hearings before the full committee and the Acquisition Policy Panel, Committee on Armed Service (US House of Reps.), page 26

Forms of step on a rake

third-person singular presentsteps on a rake
present participlestepping on a rake
past participlestepped on a rake
paststepped on a rake

Questions about step on a rake

What does step on a rake mean?
Step on a rake means to step on the tines of a garden rake, causing the handle of the rake to rise from the ground rapidly, striking the person walking in the face.
What part of speech is step on a rake?
Step on a rake is a verb.
What is the past tense of step on a rake?
The past tense of step on a rake is stepped on a rake.

Words near step on a rake in the dictionary

  1. step motors
  2. step off
  3. step on
  4. step on a duck
  5. step on a frog
  6. step on a rake
  7. step on it
  8. step on someone's lines
  9. step on someone's toes
  10. step on the gas
  11. step on the laughs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: step on a rake (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-step on a rake.ogg.

Cite this entry: “step on a rake.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/step_on_a_rake. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.