wrack

• IPA^(key): /ɹæk/
• Rhymes: -æk
• Homophone: rack

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.

wrack (plural wracks)

1. (archaic, dialectal or literary) Vengeance; revenge; persecution; punishment; consequence; trouble.
2. (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.

3. The remains of something; 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.

• wrake (obsolete)

• wrack and ruin

wrack (third-person singular simple present wracks, present participle wracking, simple past and past participle wracked)

1. (UK dialectal, transitive) To execute vengeance on; avenge.
2. (UK dialectal, transitive) To worry; tease; torment.

Late Middle English, from Middle Dutch wrak, ultimately related to Proto-Germanic *wrekaną (“to drive out”), the source of wreak and wreck.^[1] Doublet of vraic.

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”).

wrack (countable and uncountable, plural wracks)

1. (archaic)
   1. Remnant from a shipwreck as washed ashore; flotsam or jetsam.
   2. The right to claim such items.
2. Any marine vegetation cast up on shore, especially seaweed of the family Fucaceae.
3. Weeds, vegetation, or rubbish floating on a river or pond.
4. 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.

wrack (third-person singular simple present wracks, present participle wracking, simple past and past participle wracked or wrackt)

1. (transitive, usually passive voice) To wreck, especially a ship.
   • 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 115:

     Nor did the croakers have long to wait. The second night after the drowning of the mate the little yacht was suddenly wracked from stem to stern. About one o’clock in the morning there was a terrific impact that threw the slumbering guests and crew from berth and bunk. A mighty shudder ran through the frail craft; she lay far over to starboard; the engines stopped.

2. Alternative form of rack (“to cause to suffer pain, etc.”).
   • 2024 July 26, “Fans rave as Celine Dion and a FLYING cauldron save washout Paris Olympics opening ceremony”, in dailymail.co.uk‎^[3]:

     It marked her first performance in over four years after revealing that her body had been wracked with painful spasms following her diagnosis with the rare and chronic neurological disorder.

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.

• storm-wracked

• crawk