Skip to content
ontologydriven
Sign out

Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

make it rain en · VERB

Pronunciation

Etymology

Originates as a slang term for throwing out lots of cash to dancers in strip clubs, as if money is raining down on them. Draws from its roots in rainmaker (“a medicine man who seeks to induce rain; (figuratively) a person having the ability to generate business”).

Meanings

  1. (idiomatic) To bring prosperity or work to an enterprise by selling, inventing or other productive or successful activity.
    • It's time to make it rain, my friend!
  2. (idiomatic) To throw a substantial amount of paper money so that it falls on a crowd, audience, performer, or group of performers, often as a way to show off one's wealth.
    • John has a propensity to make it rain at parties when he is drunk.
    • Get your mayo, sell that yayo, strip clubs make it rain / These thugs play the game, get bucks save that cane 2004, “Push It”, in Diplomatic Immunity 2, performed by The Diplomats, New York, N.Y.: Koch Records, →OCLC:
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see make, it, rain.
    • I asked higher powers to make it rain to save our crops.

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
made it rain Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
made it rain Tense=Past lexicographic
makes it rain Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres lexicographic
making it rain Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part lexicographic

Relateds

rainmaking