wrack

[ rak ]
See synonyms for: wrackwracked on Thesaurus.com
noun

  1. wreck or wreckage.

  2. damage or destruction: wrack and ruin.

  1. a trace of something destroyed: leaving not a wrack behind.

  2. seaweed or other vegetation cast on the shore.

verb (used with object)

  1. to wreck: He wracked his car up on the river road.

Origin of wrack

1
First recorded before 900; Middle English wrak (noun), Old English wræc “vengeance, misery,” akin to wracu “vengeance, misery,” wrecan “to drive out, punish”; see wreak

Words that may be confused with wrack

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use wrack in a sentence

  • Waiting for the two-bit elevator was nerve wracking; hospitals always have such poky elevators.

    Highways in Hiding | George Oliver Smith

  • These two months were very nerve wracking due to the continual bombing of Nuremburg which was only three miles away.

  • A wild, nerve-wracking cheer went up, as—sword in hand—Jean Bart led his boarders over the side of the Dutch vessel.

  • The drum seemed to be wracking and straining itself in the agony of effort, and slight noises came from it at times.

    Two Little Savages | Ernest Thompson Seton

  • His grammatical atrocities—such as sentences without predicates—are eye-wracking.

British Dictionary definitions for wrack (1 of 2)

wrack1

rack

/ (ræk) /

noun

  1. collapse or destruction (esp in the phrase wrack and ruin)

  2. something destroyed or a remnant of such

verb

  1. a variant spelling of rack 1

Origin of wrack

1
Old English wræc persecution, misery; related to Gothic wraka, Old Norse rāk. Compare wreck, wretch

usage For wrack

The use of the spelling wrack rather than rack in sentences such as she was wracked by grief or the country was wracked by civil war is very common but is thought by many people to be incorrect

British Dictionary definitions for wrack (2 of 2)

wrack2

/ (ræk) /

noun

  1. seaweed or other marine vegetation that is floating in the sea or has been cast ashore

  2. any of various seaweeds of the genus Fucus, such as F. serratus (serrated wrack)

  1. literary, or dialect

    • a wreck or piece of wreckage

    • a remnant or fragment of something destroyed

Origin of wrack

2
C14 (in the sense: a wrecked ship, wreckage, hence later applied to marine vegetation washed ashore): perhaps from Middle Dutch wrak wreckage; the term corresponds to Old English wræc wrack 1

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Idioms and Phrases with wrack

wrack

see under rack.

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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