Meaning & Analysis
A direct simile describing a person or animal as being extremely thin, comparing their physique to the slender, skeletal form of a garden rake.
Insights
Poverty and Deprivation
The simile metaphorically suggests a state of extreme poverty or deprivation. The rake, a basic tool for manual labor, evokes a life of hardship where food is scarce, leading to a gaunt, underfed appearance.
Illness and Frailty
Leanness is often a physical symptom of sickness. The proverb can be used to describe someone who is wasting away due to illness, with their body reduced to a skeletal frame.
Anxiety and Overwork
The comparison can symbolize the physical toll of emotional or mental strain. The body becomes 'lean' not from lack of food, but from being consumed by worry, anxiety, or excessive intellectual work.
Austerity and Bareness
A rake is a functional object stripped of all non-essentials. Metaphorically, being 'as lean as a rake' can describe a state of stark austerity or being reduced to one's barest existence, whether physically or materially.
Symbolism of Labor and Poverty
Drawn from a pre-industrial, agrarian world, the rake symbolizes a life of manual labor and subsistence. Shakespeare's use in *Coriolanus*—'Let us revenge this with our pikes ere we become rakes; for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread'—explicitly links this leanness to poverty and starvation, reflecting a common social reality.
Agrarian Imagery
The proverb's imagery is rooted in the functional, skeletal form of a common agricultural tool. This connection to the land and manual work made the simile instantly understandable and resonant in a society where most people were familiar with such objects, unlike modern, more abstract comparisons.
Psychological Weight
Quotations from the 17th century, such as 'Care makes him as' and 'Your study makes you as', reveal a historical awareness of the psychosomatic effects of stress. The simile was used not just for physical hunger but to describe the wasting effects of anxiety, worry, and intense intellectual effort.
Natural and Rural Comparisons
The comparison to a 'shotten herring' (a fish that has spawned and is thus thin) in the cross-references highlights a pattern of using imagery from nature and rural life to describe human conditions. This reflects a worldview deeply connected to the cycles of agriculture and the natural world.
Rhetorical Devices
Simile
The proverb is a classic simile, using 'as' to create a direct and vivid comparison between a person's body and a rake.
Visual Imagery
The comparison creates a powerful and immediate visual of skeletal thinness by referencing a familiar, bony object, making the abstract concept of 'leanness' concrete.
Hyperbole
The statement is an exaggeration used for effect. A person cannot be literally as thin as a rake, but the hyperbole effectively emphasizes the extreme degree of emaciation.
Transcription
Quotations
I waxe as leyne as anny rake.
His bones crake, Leane as a rake.
And yet art thou skyn and bone, leane as a rake.
Hir bodie leane as any Rake.
Her body is as leane as any rakes.
Maigres comme pies. As leane as Rakes (we say).
(Your study makes you as).
(a rake, or a shotten herring).
The English say, As leane as a rake, or a lath.
(Care makes him as).
I am as lean as a rake; a very Anatome.
(He is as).
Shakespeare Citations
Let us revenge this with our pikes ere we become rakes; for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread.
Cross References
- See St., no. 723.
- H447 As lean (lank) as a shotten herring.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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