Word.ws English Dictionary

wrest

/ɹɛst/

wrest verb: to pull or twist violently. Also the ellipsis of saw wrest.

wrest: to pull or twist violently
Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Verb

wrest (third-person singular simple present wrests, present participle wresting, simple past and past participle wrested)

  1. (transitive) To pull or twist violently.
  2. (transitive) To obtain by pulling or violent force.
    • He wrested the remote control from my grasp and changed the channel.
    • [D]id not ſhe / Of Timna [Delilah] firſt betray me, and reveal / The ſecret wreſted from me in her highth / Of Nuptial Love proteſt, carrying it ſtrait / To them who had corrupted her, my Spies, / And Rivals?1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […].”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 42
    Synonyms:
    rend
  3. (figuratively, transitive) To seize.
    • [S]he was one of your ſoft ſpoken, canting, whining hypocrites, who with a truly jeſuitical art, could wreſt evil out of the moſt inoffenſive thought, word, look or action; [...]1765, Catherine Jemmat, The Memoirs of Mrs. Catherine Jemmat, Daughter of the Late Admiral Yeo, of Plymouth. Written by Herself, 2nd edition, volume I, London: Printed for the author, at...
    • But the arrival of the new members of council from England, naturally had the effect of uniting the old servants of the [East India] Company. [John] Clavering, [George Henry] Monson, and [Philip] Francis formed the majority. They instantly wrested the government out of the hands of [Warren]...1841 October, [Thomas Babington Macaulay], “Art. V.—Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of Bengal. Compiled from Original Papers, by the Rev. G. R. Gleig, M.A. 3 vols. 8vo....
  4. (figuratively, transitive) To distort, to pervert, to twist.
    • And I beſeech you / Wreſt once the Law to your authority, / To do a great right, do a little wrong, / And curbe this cruell deuill of his will.c. 1596–1598 (date written), W[illiam] Shakespeare, The Excellent History of the Merchant of Venice. […] (First Quarto), [London]: […] J[ames] Roberts [for Thomas Heyes], published 1600, →OCLC, [Act...
    • Thou ſhalt not wreſt the iudgement of thy poore in his cauſe.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Exodus 23:6
  5. (transitive) To tune with a wrest, or key.
    • The Harpe. A harpe geueth ſounde as it is ſette / The harper may wreſt it vntunablye1503 July, William Cornishe [i.e., William Cornysh], “In the Fleete Made by Me William Cornishe otherwise Called Nyshwhete Chapelman with the Most Famose and Noble Kyng Henry the VII. His Reygne the...

Noun (1)

wrest (plural wrests)

  1. The act of wresting; a wrench or twist; distortion.
    • Whereas therefore it is concluded out of theſe ſo weak Premiſſes, that the retaining of divers things in the Church of England, which other Reformed Churches have caſt out, muſt needs argue that we do not well, unleſs we can ſhew that they have done ill; what needed this wreſt to draw out from on...1676, Richard Hooker, Izaak Walton, “Book IV. Concerning Their Third Assertion, that Our Form of Church-Polity is Corrupted with Popish Orders, Rites and Ceremonies, Banished out of Certain Reformed...
  2. A key to tune a stringed instrument.
    • The Harpe. […] A harper with his wreſt maye tune the harpe wrong / Mys tunying of an Inſtrument ſhal hurt a true ſonge1503 July, William Cornishe [i.e., William Cornysh], “In the Fleete Made by Me William Cornishe otherwise Called Nyshwhete Chapelman with the Most Famose and Noble Kyng Henry the VII. His Reygne the...
    • The Minstrel […] wore round his neck a silver chain, by which hung the wrest, or key, with which he tuned his harp.1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, chapter XIII, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, page...
  3. (obsolete) Active or motive power.
    • Adowne he keſt it with ſo puiſſant wreſt, / That backe againe it did alofte rebowned, / And gaue againſt his mother earth a gronefull ſownd.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 359

Noun (2)

wrest (plural wrests)

  1. A partition in a water wheel by which the form of the buckets is determined.
    • Fig. 6 is the outline of a wheel having 40 buckets. […] The partitions, which determine the form of the buckets, conſiſt of three different planes or boards AB, BC, CD, which are variouſly named by different artiſts. We have heard them named the Start or Shoulder, the Arm, and the Wrest (probably...1810, “WATER-Works”, in Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature, 4th enlarged and improved edition, volume XX, Edinburgh: Printed by Andrew Bell...

Noun (3)

wrest (plural wrests)

  1. (dated, dialectal) A metal (formerly wooden) piece of some ploughs attached under the mouldboard (the curved blade that turns over the furrow) for clearing out the furrow; the mouldboard itself.
    • [W]hen giving ley or stubble land a single furrow for a corn crop, the sock should never be so broad as the slice, but an inch or two within it; except, like the bent-sock it comes a good way back on the wrest: because this breadth of feather materially augments the draught; and, by cutting the...1822, John Finlayson, “On the Art of Ploughing”, in Treatise on Agricultural Subjects, Glasgow: Printed by William Lang, 62, Bell-Street, sold by Tho[ma]s Lochhead, 2, Park Place, Stockwell; [et...
    • They [turn-wrest ploughs] are now so constructed that the ploughman can readily shift his coulter by means of a lever, which reaches the bottom of the handles, and also his wrests or mould-boards from side to side, without leaving his station between the handles of his plough, they being so...Cuthbert W. Johnson (1842), “PLOUGH”, in The Farmer’s Encyclopædia, and Dictionary of Rural Affairs, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC, pages 981–982

Also used as

wrest is also the ellipsis of saw wrest.

wrest meaning in Arabic

wrest in Arabic

to obtain by pulling or violent force
اِنْتَزَعَ intazaʕa

Examples of wrest in a sentence

  • Christ wrests it from him by letting in a stream of light.1858, James Foote, “Lecture LVIII. Luke XI. 14–26.”, in Lectures on the Gospel According to Luke. … In Two Volumes, 3rd edition, volume I...
  • They instantly wrested the government out of the hands of [Warren] Hastings; [...]1841 October, [Thomas Babington Macaulay], “Art. V.—Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of Bengal. Compiled from...
  • We have heard them named the Start or Shoulder, the Arm, and the Wrest (probably for wriſt, on account of a reſemblance of the whole line to a human arm); […]1810, “WATER-Works”, in Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature, 4th enlarged and...
  • Applying this to the plough, we find that the coulter, share, wrest, cheek-plates, and sole-shoe, all form more or less continuous parts of a large wedge or moving inclined plane.1908, Henry Stephens, James MacDonald, Stephens’ Book of the Farm: Dealing Exhaustively with Every Branch of Agriculture … In Three...

Synonyms of wrest

Forms of wrest

Verb
third-person singular presentwrests
present participlewresting
past participlewrested
pastwrested
Noun
pluralwrests

Past tense of wrest: wrested

Origin of wrest

From Middle English wresten, wrasten, wræsten, from Old English wrǣstan (“to twist forcibly, wrench”), from Proto-Germanic *wraistijaną, (compare Proto-Germanic *wrīhaną (“to turn, wind; to cover, envelop”), *wrīþaną (“to weave, twist”), Old Norse reista (“to bend, twist”)), from a derivative of Proto-Indo-European *wreiḱ-, *wreyḱ- (“to bend, twist”), *wreyt- (“to bend”). See also writhe, wry. The noun is derived from the verb.

Possibly a variant of wrist: see the quotation. Wrist is also derived from *wrīþaną (“to weave, twist”), from a derivative of Proto-Indo-European *wreiḱ-, *wreyḱ- (“to bend, twist”), *wreyt- (“to bend”).

A misspelling of rest, probably influenced by wrest (etymology 1, verb and noun).

Words formed from wrest

Phrases with wrest

Words that rhyme with wrest

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about wrest

What does wrest mean?
Wrest means to pull or twist violently.
What is wrest in Arabic?
Wrest in Arabic is اِنْتَزَعَ (intazaʕa). See Wrest meaning in Arabic.
How do you use wrest in a sentence?
Christ wrests it from him by letting in a stream of light.
What part of speech is wrest?
Wrest can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce wrest?
Wrest is pronounced /ɹɛst/.
What is the past tense of wrest?
The past tense of wrest is wrested.

Words near wrest in the dictionary

  1. wrenthrush
  2. wrenthrushes
  3. wrentit
  4. wrentits
  5. Wressle
  6. wrest
  7. wrest block
  8. wrest blocks
  9. wrest-block
  10. wrest-blocks
  11. wrest-harrow

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wrest (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-au-wrest.ogg.

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