Your English: Collocations: raise

Often confused with its intransitive equivalent rise, the verb raise is particularly rich in the number of collocations it can form. Some of these convey the literal meaning of raise, as in raise your hand or raise your glass, while others are more idiomatic, e.g. raise a smile or raise hell (as in 'His jokes failed to raise a smile' or make people laugh, and 'They raised hell when they were told the hotel had no record of their booking', or got very angry and made a scene). In the sense of ‘create’, raise can collocate with a number of abstract nouns, for example raise doubts, raise fears, raise hopes and raise expectations (as in 'We don’t want to raise your hopes at this early stage' or 'Doubts have been raised about the viability of the project').

If you raise your eyebrows, you show that you are surprised by something, as in 'The decision raised a few eyebrows around here', while raising your voice indicates that you are speaking in a loud voice, probably because you are angry. You can also raise the alarm if you want to draw people’s attention to a problem. You can raise children, raise a family and, in American English, raise animals. Finally, if a performer or sports team puts in a performance that gets the audience or spectators particularly excited, they can raise the roof: 'They raised the roof when they played their best-known song as an encore'.