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muckraker

noun

Etymology

From muck + raker. Believed to have been coined following a 1906 speech by United States President Theodore Roosevelt, in which he likened the investigative journalist to ‘the Man with the Muck-rake’, a character in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.

  1. derived from *rakō✻
  2. derived from rák — “strip; stripe; furrow; small mountain ravine”
  3. derived from *h₃reǵ-✻ — “to straighten, right oneself”
  4. derived from *rakō✻ — “path, track; course, direction; an unfolding, unwinding; account, narrative; argument, reasoning”
  5. inherited from racu — “bed of a stream; path; account, narrative; explanation; argument, reasoning; reason”
  6. inherited from rake
  7. suffixed as raker — “rake + er”
  8. compounded as muckraker — “muck + raker”

Definitions

  1. One who investigates and exposes issues of corruption that often violate widely held…

    One who investigates and exposes issues of corruption that often violate widely held values; e.g. one who exposes political corruption or the poor conditions in prisons.

  2. One of a group of American investigative reporters, novelists and critics of the…

    One of a group of American investigative reporters, novelists and critics of the Progressive Era (the 1890s to the 1920s).

    • "Oh, in many ways. There are two classes of people who are not welcomed on the Canal Zone—magazine writers and applicants for positions who have political influence back of them. The former are regarded as muckrakers, the latter as spies."
    • "Lady," says he, "the goil's nutty! You got a bughouse patient on your bands! This here talk about the white-slave traffic, ma'am… it's all the work o' these magazine muckrakers!"

  3. A sensationalist, scandalmongering journalist, one who is not driven by any social…

    A sensationalist, scandalmongering journalist, one who is not driven by any social principles.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for muckraker. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA