Word.ws English Dictionary

wreaken

wreaken is the past participle of wreak.

Meaning of wreak

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.
  2. (archaic) To chasten, or chastise/chastize, or castigate, or punish, or smite.
    • The police abused their authority to wreak an innocent.
  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
  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...

See all 6 meanings of wreak

Questions about wreaken

What is wreaken the past participle of?
Wreaken is the past participle of wreak.

Words near wreaken in the dictionary

  1. wreak
  2. wreak havoc
  3. wreake
  4. wreaked
  5. wreaked havoc
  6. wreaken
  7. wreaker
  8. wreakers
  9. wreakes
  10. wreakest
  11. wreaketh

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wreaken (page history and authors); 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.

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