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wrack

[ rak ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

wreck or wreckage.
damage or destruction:
wrack and ruin.
a trace of something destroyed:
leaving not a wrack behind.
seaweed or other vegetation cast on the shore.

verb (used with object)

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

wrack

/ ��æ�� /

noun

collapse or destruction (esp in the phrase wrack and ruin )
something destroyed or a remnant of such

verb

a variant spelling of rack 1

wrack

/ ��æ�� /

noun

seaweed or other marine vegetation that is floating in the sea or has been cast ashore
any of various seaweeds of the genus Fucus, such as F. serratus ( serrated wrack )
literary.
1. a wreck or piece of wreckage
2. a remnant or fragment of something destroyed

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Usage

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

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Word History and Origins

Origin of wrack¹

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

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Word History and Origins

Origin of wrack¹

Old English �ɰ�æ�� persecution, misery; related to Gothic wraka, Old Norse ��. Compare wreck , wretch

Origin of wrack²

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 �ɰ�æ�� wrack ¹

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Idioms and Phrases

see under rack .

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

Haiti is currently wracked by economic chaos, little functioning political control, and increasingly violent gang warfare.

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At issue, the government says, is last year's pro-Palestinian campus protests, which wracked campuses across the country, and which the Trump administration says contributed to the harassment of Jewish students.

From

India, for centuries, was wracked by famines and chronic food shortages, leaving generations to survive on meagre nutrition.

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Trump's and his administration's focus on eradicating the gang has since brought additional, hostile attention to an immigrant population wracked with political turbulence.

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As he languished on the IL, enduring a series of painful flare-ups almost every time he tried to begin a hitting program, the nine-year veteran started to become wracked with doubt.

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Related Words

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

WRAC wrackful

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