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.
3. The remains; 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.

• wrack and ruin

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

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

Late Middle English, from Middle Dutch wrak.

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) Remnant from a shipwreck as washed ashore, or the right to claim such items.
2. Any marine vegetation cast up on shore, especially seaweed of the genus Fucus.
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, 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.

• channelled wrack
• flat wrack
• spiral wrack
• tidewrack

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

1. (transitive) To wreck, especially a ship (usually in passive).
2. Alternative form of rack (“to cause to suffer pain, etc.”)

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