30 July 2015
racket (1)
[rak-it]
noun
1. a loud noise or clamor, especially of a disturbing or confusing kind; din; uproar:
The traffic made a terrible racket in the street below.
2. social excitement, gaiety, or dissipation.
3. an organized illegal activity, such as bootlegging or the extortion of money from legitimate business people by threat or violence.
4. a dishonest scheme, trick, business, activity, etc.:
the latest weight-reducing racket.
5. Usually, the rackets. organized illegal activities:
Some say that the revenue from legalized gambling supports the rackets.
6. Slang.
an occupation, livelihood, or business.
an easy or profitable source of livelihood.
verb (used without object)
7. to make a racket or noise.
8. to take part in social gaiety or dissipation.
Origin of racket 1
1555-1565; 1890-95 for def 6; metathetic variant of dial. rattick; see rattle1
Can be confused
racket, racquet.
Synonyms
1. tumult, disturbance, outcry. See noise.
Antonyms Expand
1, 2. tranquillity.
racket (2) or racquet (for defs 1, 2, 4)
[rak-it]
noun
1. a light bat having a netting of catgut or nylon stretched in a more or less oval frame and used for striking the ball in tennis, the shuttlecock in badminton, etc.
2. the short-handled paddle used to strike the ball in table tennis.
3. rackets, (used with a singular verb) racquet (def 1).
4. a snowshoe made in the form of a tennis racket.
Origin
1490-1500; < Middle French raquette, rachette, perhaps < Arabic rāḥet, variant of rāḥah palm of the hand
Related forms
racketlike, adjective
Dictionary.com
Examples from the Web for racket
Contemporary Examples
For all who do believe this, the very existence of Israel is a sort of fraud or a racket.
(No Drama Obama’s Israel Ambivalence, James Poulos, July 25, 2014)
The Texas financier Allen Stanford stands accused of a mere $7 billion racket.
(Why Smart People Are Dumb, Morley Safer, February 10, 2010)
They marched through the neighborhood, everybody running outside to see what the racket was all about.
(The Stacks: The Neville Brothers Stake Their Claim as Bards of the Bayou, John Ed Bradley, April 26, 2014)
Anagram
tacker
Today’s quote
War is a racket. It always has been… A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can’t end it by disarmament conferences. You can’t eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can’t wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
– Major General Smedley Butler
On this day
30 July 1626 – earthquake in Naples, Italy, kills 70,000 people.
30 July 1818 – birthday of Emily Bronte, author of the novel, ‘Wuthering Heights‘. Died 19 December 1848.
30 July 1863 – birthday of Henry Ford, American industrialist and car maker. Died 7 April 1947.
30 July 1881 – birth of Smedley Butler, U.S. Marine Corp Major-General. He received 19 medals, five of which were for bravery. He twice received the Medal of Honor. Butler was, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in history. Nonetheless, he was an outspoken critic of war and military actions. He wrote a book called ‘War is a Racket’, which exposed the links between the military and industry, in which he stated that business interests directly benefit from warfare. Butler wrote a summary of the book, which stated: ‘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. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes‘. He died on 21 June 1940.
30 July 1898 – W.K. Kellogg invents cornflakes.
30 July 1956 – the United States officially adopts ‘In God We Trust’ as the national motto.
30 July 1958 – birthday of Kate Bush, English singer/songwriter. In 1978, she had a hit song with ‘Wuthering Heights‘, a song about the novel of the same name which was written by Emily Bronte (whose birthday is also today). She followed this up with a number of other hits, including ‘Babooshka‘ and ‘The Man with the Child in His Eyes‘.
30 July 1969 – birthday of Simon Baker, Australian actor. Stars in the TV series, ‘The Mentalist‘.