1751 C. Talbot Let. 29 Feb. in Series of Lett. E. Carter & C. Talbot (1808) II. 251 My excuse is nothing but mere wicked racketing as you very justly call it... Racketing, is a bad thing, by which I mean, not only going to public places, not only consuming life in idle visits and dress, but merely the being..perpetually out all day and every day.

1760 A. Murphy Way to keep Him i. 9 If all the Women in London..were to sit down and die of the Spleen, what would become of all the public Places?.. We should not have the Racketting with 'em we have now.

1795 W. Scott Let. 23 Aug. in J. G. Lockhart Mem. Life Scott (1837) I. 234 I wish they may come down soon, as we shall have fine racketting.

1822 W. Scott Let. 25 June (1934) VII. 192 Late hours and raqueting.

1859 G. Meredith Ordeal Richard Feverel II. ii. 16 It's all nonsense..about bringing up a lad out of the common way. He's all the better for a little racketing when he's green—feels his bone and muscle—learns to know the world.

1880 S. Baring-Gould Mehalah I. xiii. 256 There'll be junketings and racketings.

1917 E. Gosse Life A. C. Swinburne iv. 119 His friends were again made a little anxious by his racketing, and wished to get him down into the country.

1943 B. C. Williams Forever Young iv. 67 He felt a qualm at so much racketing and junketing about. He had not kept his good resolutions and, for a fact, gallivanting and carousing had done nothing to make him feel over-well.

1991 Times (Nexis) 30 Nov. Politicians, pop stars and the racketings of high society mirror what's in or out as much as clothes.

1760 A. Murphy Way to keep Him iii 58 It gives me new Life, to have so much Company in the House, and such a Racketing at the Door with Coaches and Chairs.

1797 I. D'Israeli Vaurien I. iv. 43 Like entering a dark room in search of some object, from which we issue, without having found what we wanted, after a great deal of racketting among the table and chairs.

1849 W. Irving Bk. of Hudson 90 The whole family have been frightened out of their wits, for there's such racketing and rummaging about the old house, that they can't sleep quiet in their beds!

1899 S. MacManus In Chimney Corners 29 What with the wrestling and the fighting and the racketing they made.

1913 Janesville (Wisconsin) Daily Gaz. 3 Nov. 9/4 It was the roaring of field ordnance and the racketing of small arms.

1964 Musical Times 105 575 A Polterabend was the eve of a wedding when a lot of racketing was to be expected.

1989 J. Barfoot Family News xi. 222 There were other kids there. And it was okay to be noisy. I don't think it was here, my parents didn't like a lot of racketing around.

1752 S. Richardson Let. 22 Feb. (1964) 197 Miss Sutton is so intent upon practising..the racketting life, that she cannot give me one line of the theory.

1763 E. Carter in Mem. (1808) I. 362 We live a very racketting life at the Hague.

1797 H. Lee Canterbury Tales I. 192 There's such racketing work at the castle, that a body can never find time to come among you.

1820 W. Irving Sketch Bk. vi. 24 His son Tom, an officer who has served abroad.., likes nothing so much as a racketing, roystering life.

1847 W. Irving in Life & Lett. (1864) IV. 25 New York,..this great crowded metropolis, so full of life, bustle, noise, show, and splendor,..is really now one of the most racketing cities in the world.

1895 W. Besant Westminster iii. 88 A place filled with noisy, racketing, even uproarious life.

1928 C. Morley Ess. 270 His condemnation of our busy, racketing life is so damned conclusive!

1944 Music Educators Jrnl. 30 42 New and fresh editions of roaring and racketing heroes..are being made that could not have been created by any previous generation.

1962 T. R. Fyvel Troublemakers ii. x. 135 As if looking for the common exit from this racketing life, many a Teddy boy likes to have a respectable girl in tow.

1843 Times 13 Oct. 4/2 A solemn hymn sung to a racketting tune they have no objection to.

1848 C. Crowe Night Side of Nature II. vi. 239 Poltergeist, or racketing spectre.

a1866 J. Keble Misc. Poems (1869) How sticks, moss and feather are strewed by the weather Beneath each old racketing tree.

1908 Evening Times (Cumberland, Maryland) 5 Sept. 8/5 Mrs Isaac L. Rice is known all over the world to-day as ‘the apostle of silence’... At first..she was pronounced a crank, especially by those men whose racketing river craft she suppressed.

1943 News (Frederick, Maryland) 3 May 8/1 The rest was lost in the racketing crash of a rifle whose slug cut the band neatly off Jones' hat.

1965 L. Murray Coll. Poems (1991) 11 The racketing hooves Fell silent as we ascended from the hill Above the farms.

1996 Curriculum Inq. 26 237 If my aging ears had clearly heard it above the racketing wind, surely all the scouts had as well.