Raffle
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A drawing, often held as a fundraiser, in which tickets or chances are sold to win a prize.
"He entered a raffle to win a lifetime supply of toothpaste, but he did not win."
- 2 Refuse; rubbish. uncountable
- 3 a lottery in which the prizes are goods rather than money wordnet
- 4 A game of dice in which the player who throws three of the same number wins all the stakes. obsolete
- 5 The system by which cases are assigned to judges in multi-sala courts. Philippines
- 1 To award something by means of a raffle or random drawing. often, transitive
"They raffled off four gift baskets."
- 2 dispose of in a lottery wordnet
- 3 To participate in a raffle. intransitive
"to raffle for a watch"
Example
More examples"Have you bought a raffle ticket yet?"
Etymology
From Middle English rafle, from Old French rafle, raffle (“dice game", also "plundering”), from rafler (“to snatch, seize, carry off”), from Frankish *raffolōn, from Proto-Germanic *hrapōną, *hrēpōną (“to scratch, touch, pluck out, snatch”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kreb(h)-, *(s)kerb(h)- (“to turn, bend, shrink”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to turn, bend”). Cognate with Middle Dutch raffel (“dice game”), German raffen (“to snatch away, sweep off”), Old English hreppan (“to touch, treat, attack”).
See raff.
Related phrases
More for "raffle"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.