Word.ws English Dictionary

wreaking

wreaking is the present participle and gerund 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

Noun

wreaking (plural wreakings)

  1. The act by which something is wreaked.
    • the wreakings of revenge
    • wreakings of the vengeance of a wrathful God against His own creatures

Forms of wreaking

pluralwreakings

Phrases with wreaking

Words that rhyme with wreaking

2 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about wreaking

What does wreaking mean?
Wreaking means the act by which something is wreaked.
What is wreaking the present participle and gerund of?
Wreaking is the present participle and gerund of wreak.
What part of speech is wreaking?
Wreaking is a noun.
What is the plural of wreaking?
The plural of wreaking is wreakings.

Words near wreaking in the dictionary

  1. wreakers
  2. wreakes
  3. wreakest
  4. wreaketh
  5. wreakful
  6. wreaking
  7. wreaking havoc
  8. wreakings
  9. wreakless
  10. wreaks
  11. Wreaks End

Source and license

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