Meaning
To make a furious commotion - riotous trouble-making, violent protest, or a wild row. It belongs to the family of raising the Devil, raise hell, and raise the roof, and it promises noise rather than stealth. Informal, boisterous, usually faintly affectionate; raising Cain is the common participial form, and the phrase can describe both protest and party. Regional use: General English; American origin.
Origin
An American euphemism: invoking Cain, the Bible's first murderer, in place of the more explicit devil-raising phrases of the raise-the-Devil and raise-Old-Harry family - raise in the conjuring sense Chaucer already used, 'to reyse a feend'. The record unearthed by Word Histories begins with a pun, not an idiom: a conundrum in the Burlington Free Press of 26 July 1833 asks why Adam and Eve were sugar planters and answers 'Because they raised Cain - (cane)'. The first genuine use follows in the Daily Picayune of 18 April 1840, reporting that 'the Irishmen at the Croton Water Works are raising Cain once more', and the Maumee City Express a month later pairs Cain with the Old Harry in a joke about Adam and Eve as rowdies. Robert Louis Stevenson kept it in the language with Billy Bones in Treasure Island (1883): 'I'll raise Cain.' Wiktionary notes the eggcorn spelling raise cane.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- raise the Devil
- raised Cain
- raising Cain
Usage Examples
- The travelling fans raised Cain outside the stadium until the riot police formed up.
- When the bank charged her twice, she raised Cain until a manager in Leeds personally reversed it.
- The twins spent the whole reception raising Cain under the marquee and were forgiven by dessert.