wrack
EnglishEdit
PronunciationEdit
Etymology 1Edit
From Middle English wrake, wrache, wreche, from a merger of Old English wracu, wræc (“misery, suffering”) and Old English wrǣċ (“vengeance, revenge”). See also wrake.
NounEdit
wrack (plural wracks)
- (archaic, dialectal or literary) Vengeance; revenge; persecution; punishment; consequence; trouble.
- (archaic, except in dialects) Ruin; destruction.
- c. 1593, Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander[1], page 7:
- Therefore, in sign her treasure suffered wrack,
Since Hero's time hath half the world been black.
- The remains; a wreck.
- 2011, John Jeremiah Sullivan, "Mr. Lytle: An Essay", in Pulphead:
- Lytle was already moaning in shame, fallen back in bed with his hand across his face like he'd just washed up somewhere, a piece of wrack.
- 2011, John Jeremiah Sullivan, "Mr. Lytle: An Essay", in Pulphead:
Derived termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
VerbEdit
wrack (third-person singular simple present wracks, present participle wracking, simple past and past participle wracked)
- (Britain dialectal, transitive) To execute vengeance; avenge.
- (Britain dialectal, transitive) To worry; tease; torment.
Etymology 2Edit
Late Middle English, from Middle Dutch wrak.
Cognate with German Wrack, Old Norse rek, Danish vrag, Swedish vrak, Old English wræc); also compare Gothic 𐍅𐍂𐌹𐌺𐌰𐌽 (wrikan), 𐍅𐍂𐌰𐌺𐌾𐌰𐌽 (wrakjan, “persecute”), Old Norse reka (“drive”).
NounEdit
wrack (countable and uncountable, plural wracks)
- (archaic) Remnant from a shipwreck as washed ashore, or the right to claim such items.
- Any marine vegetation cast up on shore, especially seaweed of the genus Fucus.
- Weeds, vegetation or rubbish floating on a river or pond.
- A high flying cloud; a rack.
- 1892, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes[2], HTML edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2011:
- A dull wrack was drifting slowly across the sky, and a star or two twinkled dimly here and there through the rifts of the clouds.
Derived termsEdit
TranslationsEdit
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
VerbEdit
wrack (third-person singular simple present wracks, present participle wracking, simple past and past participle wracked or wrackt)
- (transitive) To wreck, especially a ship (usually in passive).
- Alternative form of rack (“to cause to suffer pain, etc.”)
Usage notesEdit
Frequently confused with rack (“torture; suffer pain”), though traditionally means “wreck”. Etymologically, wrack and ruin (“complete destruction”) and storm-wracked (“wrecked by a storm”) are the only terms that derive from wrack, rather than rack. However in usage forms such as nerve-wracking are common, and considered acceptable by some authorities; see usage notes for rack.