''racket'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''racket'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320113731-00-⌔

racket - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

racket (plural rackets)

• (countable, sports) An implement with a handle connected to a round frame strung with wire, sinew, or plastic cords, and used to hit a ball, such as in tennis or a shuttlecock in badminton.
  • ✤ Synonyms: bat, paddle, racquet
  • ✤ He bought a new tennis racket two days ago.
  • ✤ Ivor had acquired more than a mile of fishing rights with the house; he was not at all a good fisherman, but one must do something; one generally, however, banged a ball with a squash- racket against a wall.¹
• (Canada) A snowshoe formed of cords stretched across a long and narrow frame of light wood.
• A broad wooden shoe or patten for a man or horse, to allow walking on marshy or soft ground.

Verb

racket (third-person singular simple present rackets, present participle racketing, simple past and past participle racketed)

• To strike with, or as if with, a racket.
  • ✤ Poor man[is] racketed from one temptation to another.²

Noun

racket (plural rackets)

• A loud noise.
  • ✤ Synonyms: din, noise, ruckus, row
  • ✤ Power tools work quickly, but they sure make a racket.
  • ✤ With all the racket they’re making, I can’t hear myself think!
  • ✤ What’s all this racket?
  • ✤ Vast flights of starlings, fleeing the racket, beat across the sky at high speed, like Squall-clouds,— Evening at Noon-tide.³
• An illegal scheme for profit; a fraud or swindle; or both coinstantiated.
  • ✤ Synonyms: see Thesaurus: deception
  • ✤ *prostitution and gambling controlled by rackets *
  • ✤ They had quite a racket devised to relieve customers of their money.
  • ✤ The following letter by William E. Lewis, Utica, published in both the Observer-Dispatch and the Daily Press, is reproduced here because of its bearing on the milk situation locally and elsewhere. Mr. Lewis’ letter: […] Finally, in addition to ruinous price control, the farmer in the Mohawk Valley is up against a “milk racket” in Utica, a “racket” as heinous and disreputable as any milk racket in New York City or Chicago. There is no free market in Utica. The owner of a herd of 40 cows can’t sell his milk in Utica, no matter how rich, pure and wholesome his milk may be, unless he signs a contract with the Dairymen’s League (which never has distributed milk in Utica) through the farmers’contract to the dealers (who is in the milk racket) and who sells the poor pinched farmers’ milk for 17¢ a quart which has cost him 3½¢ to 4½¢ per quart. It is a “racket” pure and simple. The Dairymen’s League rakeoff is 5¢ per 100 pounds of milk and 15¢ for financing the “business.” How can that be, inquires the farmer with 40 cows and 500 quarts of milk daily to sell. The answer is, that about 30 months ago the largest retail dealers of Utica experienced a shortage of milk, and applied to the Dairymen’s League for a relief supply of milk, which was furnished, but on condition, however, that the dealers force their producing farmers to sign contracts with the Dairymen’s League or be turned out of the market. With no market to go to, the farmers stood for the “racket,” all except a few, who have given their choice cows to the butcher rather than submit. Among the victims of this “turn off” was the writer, owner of 40 cows and a farm in the Mohawk Valley. A “racket” is a detestable thing, if it results in 17¢ a quart to the consumer and 4½¢ price to the farmer.⁴
  • ✤ War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives… Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and “we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,” but the profits… skyrocket—and are safely pocketed.⁵
  • ✤ In six decades he had spotted all the rackets, smelled all the rats, and he was tired of being the absolute and sick master and boss of the inner self.⁶
  • ✤ Island girl,
    Black boy want you in his island world.
    He want to take you from the racket boss.
    He want to save you, but the cause is lost.⁷
• (informal) Any industry or enterprise.
  • ✤ They dropped out of the acting racket in 1953 and soon took up writing.⁸
• (dated, slang) A carouse; any reckless dissipation.
• (dated, slang) Something taking place considered as exciting, trying, unusual, etc. or as an ordeal.

Verb

racket (third-person singular simple present rackets, present participle racketing, simple past and past participle racketed)

• (intransitive) To make a clattering noise.
• (intransitive, dated) To be dissipated; to carouse.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˈɹækɪt/
• Audio (Australian): 🔊
• Rhymes: -ækɪt

Etymology 1

From Middle English raket, of uncertain origin.

Possibly cognate with Middle French rachette, requette (“palm of the hand”). From Arabic رَاحَةْ اَلْيَد (rāḥat al-yad, “palm of the hand”).⁹

Alternatively, the term might be derived from Dutch raketsen instead, from Middle French rachasser (“to strike (the ball) back”).¹⁰

Etymology 2

🖼️ ➺

Attested since the 1500s, of unclear origin; possibly a metathesis of the dialectal term rattick (“to shake, rattle”).¹¹

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1922, Michael Arlen, “3/19/2”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days: ↩

2. 1658, John Hewytt, Nine Select Sermons: ↩

3. 1997, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 52, in Mason & Dixon, 1st US edition, New York: Henry Holt and Company, →ISBN, part Two: America, page 501: ↩

4. 1930, William E. Lewis, quotee, “Claims Racket Controls Milk/Producers Are Going Broke—No Chance to Operate Profitably on Present Prices”, in Unity Dairymen’s News ‎${}^{[1]}$, volume 2, number 11: September, Utica, New York, page 4: ↩

5. 1935, Smedley Butler, *War is a Racket *, page 1 & 7: ↩

6. 1975, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, page 408: ↩

7. 1975, “Island Girl”, in Bernie Taupin (lyrics), Rock of the Westies, performed by Elton John: ↩

8. 1979 February 10, John Mitzel, “Crimes of Passion”, in Gay Community News, volume 6, number 28, page 13: ↩

9. American Heritage Dictionary, Racket; https://web.archive.org/web/20130714083021/http://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=racket ↩

10. Gillmeister, Heiner (1998), Tennis: A Cultural History, Washington Square, N.Y.: New York University Press, →ISBN, pages 5, 123 ↩

11. “racket”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present. ↩

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