rakehell, a thorough scoundrel; a debauchee or rake; ‘The King of rake-hells’, Bacon, Hen. VII (ed. Lumby, p. 165); ‘Vaultneant, pendart, pendereau, a rakehel, a rascal that wil be hangd’, Nomenclator, 1585 (Nares); ‘Pendard, a rake-hell, crack-rope, gallow-clapper’, Cotgrave.
rakel, impetuous, headstrong; ‘Rakyl, insolens’, Levins, Manip.; ‘Rackle’ (or ‘Rakel’) is in common prov. use in the north country in the sense of rash, violent, headstrong (EDD.). ME. rakel, rash, hasty (Chaucer, Tr. and Cr. i. 1067; iii. 1437).
ramage, said of hawks: having left the nest and begun to fly from branch to branch; hence, wild, untamed, shy; said also of animals and persons; ‘Take a sperhauke ramage’, Caxton, G. de la Tour, A viii (NED.); Turbervile, The Lover to a Gentlewoman, st. 10. Norm. F. ramage, ‘sauvage, farouche’ (Moisy); Rom. type, ramaticum, deriv. of L. ramus, a branch.
ramp, a bold vulgar girl. Middleton and Dekker, Roaring Girl, iii. 3 (Trapdoor); Cymbeline, i. 6. 134; Lyly, Sapho, iii. 2 (Song).
ramp, to creep or crawl on the ground; see NED. ME. rampe: ‘A litel Serpent . . . Which rampeth’ (Gower, C. A. vi. 2230). F. ramper, ‘to creep, crawl’ (Cotgr.).
ramp, to raise the forepaws in the air (usually said of lions); ‘A rampynge and roarynge lyon’, Great Bible, 1539, Ps. xxii. 13 (so in Prayer Book); ‘The ramping lion’, 3 Hen. VI, v. 2. 13. ME. rampe; ‘He goth rampende as a leoun’ (Gower, C. A. vii. 2573). Anglo-F. ramper; ‘lioun rampant’ (Gower, Mirour, 2267). See [raump].
rampallian, a ruffian, scoundrel; a term of abuse. Beaumont and Fl., Honest Man’s Fortune, ii. 2 (Orleans); City Gallant, in Hazlitt’s Dodsley, xi. 197; applied to a woman, 2 Hen. IV, ii. 1. 65; S. Rowlands, Greenes Ghost (NED.).
rampier, a ‘rampart’, protecting bank of earth. Bacon, Henry VII (ed. Lumby, p. 165). Hence, rampired, fortified, Timon, v. 4. 47. See Dict.
rampion, a species of bell-flower, Campanula Rapunculus. Tusser, Husbandry, § 40. 12; Drayton, Pol. xx. 60. F. raiponce, ‘rampions’ (Cotgr.). The s of rampions has been taken for the plural s, and accordingly dropped.
ranch, to tear, to cut. Chapman, tr. of Iliad, v. 856; Drayton, tr. of Aeneid, xi. 1184. ‘Ranch’ in E. Anglia means to scratch deeply and severely (EDD.).