on the rack

1. Under great stress, as in I was on the rack while I waited for the test results. This expression, alluding to a medieval instrument of torture to which the victim was fastened and stretched, has been used figuratively since the late 1500s. Shakespeare had it in The Merchant of Venice (3:2): “Let me choose, for as I am I live upon the rack.”

Example Sentences

Her own plain dress she left behind on the rack, on the off chance there might one day be a ballet about governesses.

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“Better not tell me about it, then. The less I know, the less they can make me confess on the rack.”

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When more people shopped in physical stores, processing a return was often a matter putting an item back on the rack.

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"Imagine any man carrying the responsibilities Churchill did, with humanity on the rack in Europe and Asia, finding time to even think about, let alone want, half-a-dozen duckbilled platypuses," he wrote in his 1980 book Paradoxical Platypus.

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Are you one of these guys who wants the towels to hang on the rack just so?

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