wring
Americanverb (used with object)
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wrings,
present (3rd person singular)
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wrung,
past participle, past
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wringing
present participle
-
to twist forcibly.
He wrung the chicken's neck.
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to twist and compress, or compress without twisting, in order to force out water or other liquid (often followed byout ).
to wring clothes.
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to extract or expel by twisting or compression (usually followed by out orfrom ).
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to affect painfully by or as if by some contorting or compressing action.
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to clasp tightly with or without twisting.
to wring one's hands in pain.
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to force (usually followed byoff ) by twisting.
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to extract or get by forceful effort or means (often followed byout ).
verb (used without object)
-
wrings,
present (3rd person singular)
-
wrung,
past participle, past
-
wringing
present participle
-
to perform the action of wringing something.
-
to writhe, as in anguish.
noun
verb
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(often foll by out) to twist and compress to squeeze (a liquid) from (cloth, etc)
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(tr) to twist forcibly
wring its neck
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(tr) to clasp and twist (one's hands), esp in anguish
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(tr) to distress
wring one's heart
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(tr) to grip (someone's hand) vigorously in greeting
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(tr) to obtain by or as if by forceful means
wring information out of
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(intr) to writhe with or as if with pain
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soaking; drenched
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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wringsimple
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wringssimple
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have wrungperfect
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has wrungperfect
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am wringingprogressive
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are wringingprogressive
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is wringingprogressive
-
have been wringingperfect progressive
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has been wringingperfect progressive
Past
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wrungsimple
-
had wrungperfect
-
was wringingprogressive
-
were wringingprogressive
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had been wringingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of wring
before 900; Middle English wringen, Old English wringan; cognate with German ringen to wrestle
Explanation
To wring something is to twist or squeeze it, usually out of its original shape. If you annoy someone enough, they might threaten to wring your neck. If you do laundry by hand, then you most likely wring out your shirts to get rid of excess water before hanging them out to dry. You can also wring out someone's hair after washing it. As you can tell, the word often has to do with getting liquids out of something. You might wring tears out of a person's eyes if you tell him the sad story of the day you lost your puppy.
Vocabulary lists containing wring
The Watsons Go to Birmingham
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List 14
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100 SAT words Beginning with W,X,Y, and Z
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Now the 8,000 people in this remote corner of California have to ask themselves what more they can wring from the land, what more they can take and what more it can yield.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 13, 2026
Senior employees of Live Nation bragged about their ability other wring money out of ticket-buying customers, saying they were “robbing them blind.”
From Salon ● Mar. 12, 2026
He has also mocked allies uneasy about the widening conflict, referring to those who "wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force."
From Barron's ● Mar. 10, 2026
That hasn’t happened since World War II. It took a famously gut-wrenching recession to wring out the last bout of high inflation from the economy in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 14, 2026
Stevie was a sweater, so he always took his blazer off in class to avoid becoming a washcloth—something to wring out.
From "Look Both Ways" by Jason Reynolds
Like Detectorists before it, this is a series that wrings emotion from the commonplace and everyday – only this time, the treasure Crook has buried is altogether more peculiar.
From BBC ● Feb. 10, 2026
The book is structured around Prefontaine’s biggest races, which Mr. O’Meara skillfully wrings for all their drama.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2025
Hackman wrings an entire shaken worldview from his response when she simply asks who’s winning.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 28, 2025
Precipitation across the region will taper off Wednesday morning as Mother Nature wrings out the last of scattered showers over the Cascades.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 20, 2023
Trey wrings the mop in the bucket and starts rolling the bucket toward the storage room, but Kayla goes, “Uh-uhn. I know you’re not leaving that floor looking like that.”
From "On the Come Up" by Angie Thomas
The trumpeters valiantly persevere but, by the end of the day, everyone's wrung out.
From BBC ● Jun. 13, 2026
All of these jornaleros knew each other, maybe not by their real names, but by nicknames, usually wrung from the place they had lived.
From Slate ● Jan. 27, 2026
If Warshow wrung a sizable reputation out of a small body of work, he also stuffed his very short life with experience.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 2, 2026
The speculative leverage has been wrung out of this market for months.
From MarketWatch ● Dec. 30, 2025
Nhamo wept until she thought she was wrung dry.
From "A Girl Named Disaster" by Nancy Farmer
But the truth is, you have to be wringing the Turbo out pretty hard to feel a difference.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 5, 2026
You’ll want to get caught up ahead of next week’s twist—and by “twist,” I don’t mean a surprise but rather a wringing, in this case of a company by its shareholders.
From Barron's ● Oct. 31, 2025
"She was wringing her hands. She was scared. I trusted them. And they've seriously let us down, and they've let her down. That's cruelty."
From BBC ● Sep. 22, 2025
There’s no proverbial wringing of hands around the character’s decision.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 20, 2025
He was jumpy and nervous, pacing Beejee’s living room and wringing his hands.
From "The First State of Being" by Erin Entrada Kelly
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
