Word.ws English Dictionary

wrack

/ɹæk/

wrack noun: the remains of something; a wreck. Also the alternative form of rack.

wrack: the remains of something; a wreck
Image: Wollex, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

wrack (plural wracks)

  1. The remains of something; a wreck.
    • 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.2011, John Jeremiah Sullivan, “Mr. Lytle: An Essay”, in Pulphead
  2. (UK, archaic, dialectal, literary) Vengeance; revenge; persecution; punishment; consequence; trouble.
    • The dead mans corps hath made ſome Serpents weépe, / Such rewth may ryſe in beaſts of bloudy race: / And yet can man (which bragges aboue the reſt) / Uſe wracke for rewth? can murder like him beſt?1575, Jacques du Fouilloux, “The Hare, to the Hunter”, in George Gascoigne, transl., The Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting. […], London: […] Thomas Purfoot, published 1611, →OCLC, page 177
  3. (dialectal, archaic except UK) Ruin; destruction.
    • Therefore, in sign her treasure suffered wrack,
      Since Hero's time hath half the world been black.c. 1593, Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander, page 7

Verb (1)

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.

Noun (2)

wrack (countable and uncountable, plural wracks)

  1. (archaic) Remnant from a shipwreck as washed ashore; flotsam or jetsam.
  2. (archaic) The right to claim such items.
  3. Any marine vegetation cast up on shore, especially seaweed of the family Fucaceae.
  4. Weeds, vegetation, or rubbish floating on a river or pond.
  5. A high, flying cloud; a rack.
    • 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.1892, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, HTML edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2011

Verb (2)

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.
    • 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...1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 115

Also used as

wrack is also the alternative form of rack.

Examples of wrack in a sentence

  • They recovered three of the explorers very much alive, then another, wracked with severe hypothermia, who was taken to hospital.
  • Her body was wracked with arthritis, rheumatism, Parkinson's, osteoporosis and more.
  • Through fatigue and nerve wrack, his voice broke on the last word.

All 14 example sentences with wrack

Forms of wrack

Noun
pluralwracks
alternative form (obsolete)wrake
Verb
third-person singular presentwracks
present participlewracking
past participlewracked
pastwracked
past participlewrackt
pastwrackt
second-person singular present (archaic)wrackest
second-person singular past (archaic)wrackedst
third-person singular present (archaic)wracketh

Origin of wrack

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.

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

Words formed from wrack

Phrases with wrack

Words that rhyme with wrack

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about wrack

What does wrack mean?
Wrack means the remains of something; a wreck.
What part of speech is wrack?
Wrack can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce wrack?
Wrack is pronounced /ɹæk/.
What is the plural of wrack?
The plural of wrack is wracks.

Words near wrack in the dictionary

  1. WRAAC
  2. WRAAF
  3. Wrabetz
  4. Wrabness
  5. WRAC
  6. wrack
  7. wrack and ruin
  8. wrack line
  9. wrack lines
  10. wrack one's brain
  11. wrack one's brains

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wrack (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Sapaa-wrack.wav.

Cite this entry: “wrack.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wrack. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.