Word.ws English Dictionary

wreak

UK/ɹiːk//ɹik/

wreak verb: to cause harm; to afflict; to inflict; to harm or injure; to let out harm. Also the misspelling of reek.

Verb

wreak (third-person singular simple present wreaks, present participle wreaking, simple past wreaked or (nonstandard) wrought or (obsolete) wroke, past participle wreaked or (nonstandard) wrought or (obsolete) wroke or (obsolete) wroken)

  1. (transitive) To cause harm; to afflict; to inflict; to harm or injure; to let out harm.
    • The earthquake wreaked havoc in the city.
    • She wreaked her anger on his car.
  2. (archaic) To chasten, or chastise/chastize, or castigate, or punish, or smite.
    • The police abused their authority to wreak an innocent.
    • The criminal has been wreaked by the Judge to spend a year in prison.
  3. (archaic) To inflict or take vengeance on.
    • their woe / Broods maddening inwardly and scorns to wreak / Itself abroad;1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night
    • So tho' I scarce can ask it thee for hate, / Grant me some knight to do the battle for me, / Kill the foul thief, and wreak me for my son.1874, Alfred Tennyson, “Gareth and Lynette”, in Idylls of the King (The Works of Alfred Tennyson; V), cabinet edition, London: Henry S. King & Co., […], →OCLC, page 51
  4. (archaic) To take vengeance for.
    • Come wreak his loss, whom bootless ye complain.1600, [Torquato Tasso], “(please specify |book=1 to 20)”, in Edward Fairefax [i.e., Edward Fairfax], transl., Godfrey of Bulloigne, or The Recouerie of Ierusalem. […], London: […] Ar[nold] Hatfield...

Noun

wreak (plural wreaks)

  1. (archaic, literary) Revenge; vengeance; furious passion; resentment.
    • VVhat barbarous mindes for grieuance more than needs,
      Vnnaturallie ſeeks wreake vpon their Lord,
      Their true annointed Prince, their lawfull king:1593, anonymous author, The Life and Death of Iacke Straw […], →OCLC, Act I
    • Would that before my death I might but see my son The empery in my stead over the people hold
      And rush upon his foes and take on them his wreak, At push of sword and pike, in fury uncontrolled.1901, “The History of King Omar Ben Ennuman and His Sons Sherkan and Zoulmekan”, in John Payne, transl., The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, volume 2
  2. (archaic, literary) Punishment; retribution; payback.
    • Of a surety none murdered the damsel but I; take her wreak on me this moment; for, an thou do not thus, I will require it of thee before Almighty Allah.1885, “The Tale of the Three Apples”, in Sir Richard Burton, transl., The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, volume 1

Also used as

wreak is also the misspelling of reek.

Examples of wreak in a sentence

  • On the Saturday, October 1, the torrential rains began to wreak damage east of Exeter.1960 December, “Talking of Trains: The railways and the Devon floods”, in Trains Illustrated, page 709:
  • Now was the time to be avenged on his old enemy, to wreak a grudge of seventeen years.1841, Thomas Macaulay, Warren Hastings:
  • At heart they hate their horrid fates, and so wreak their poor spite on me who stand for everything they have not, and for all they most crave and never can attain.1912 February–July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Under the Moons of Mars”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC...
  • However, no thought touch'd Minerva's mind, That any one should escape his wreak design'd.1903, George Chapman, Richard Herne Shepherd, Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Works of George Chapman:

All 27 example sentences with wreak

Forms of wreak

Verb
third-person singular presentwreaks
present participlewreaking
pastwreaked
past participlewreaked
past (nonstandard)wrought
past (obsolete)wroke
past participle (nonstandard)wrought
past participle (obsolete)wroke
past participle (obsolete)wroken
Noun
pluralwreaks

Past tense of wreak: wreaked

Origin of wreak

From Middle English wreken, from Old English wrecan, from Proto-West Germanic *wrekan, from Proto-Germanic *wrekaną, from Proto-Indo-European *wreg- (“push, shove, drive, track down”). Cognate via Proto-Germanic with Dutch wreken, German rächen, Swedish vräka; cognate via PIE with Latin urgēre (English urge), and distantly cognate with English wreck.

From Middle English wreke, wrake, Northern Middle English variants of wreche, influenced later by Etymology 1, above. Compare Dutch wraak.

Words formed from wreak

Words that rhyme with wreak

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about wreak

What does wreak mean?
Wreak means to cause harm; to afflict; to inflict; to harm or injure; to let out harm.
How do you use wreak in a sentence?
On the Saturday, October 1, the torrential rains began to wreak damage east of Exeter.
What part of speech is wreak?
Wreak can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce wreak?
Wreak is pronounced /ɹiːk/ (UK).
What is the past tense of wreak?
The past tense of wreak is wreaked.

Words near wreak in the dictionary

  1. WRC
  2. WRCs
  3. Wrea Green
  4. wreader
  5. wreaders
  6. wreak
  7. wreak havoc
  8. wreake
  9. wreaked
  10. wreaked havoc
  11. wreaken

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wreak (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: en-us-wreak.ogg.

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