wreak
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: enpr: rēk
ipa: /ɹiːk/
ipa: /ɹik/
rhymes: -iːk
homophone: reek
Forms: form: wreaks
form: wreaking
form: wreaked
form: wrought
form: wroke
form: wreaked
form: wrought
form: wroke
form: wroken
Etymology: 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.
Senses: examples: text: The earthquake wreaked havoc in the city.
text: She wreaked her anger on his car.
text: On the Saturday, October 1, the torrential rains began to wreak damage east of Exeter.
ref: 1960 December, “Talking of Trains: The railways and the Devon floods”, in Trains Illustrated, page 709:
text: Against a backdrop of economic devastation wreaked by COVID-19, from which the railway has been almost totally insulated by massive sums of public money, the RMT rail union is now calling for industrial action as a pay freeze beckons.
ref: 2020 December 2, Philip Haigh, “A winter of discontent caused by threat of union action”, in Rail, page 62:
glosses: To cause harm; to afflict; to inflict; to harm or injure; to let out harm.
examples: text: The police abused their authority to wreak an innocent.
text: The criminal has been wreaked by the Judge to spend a year in prison.
text: Now was the time to be avenged on his old enemy, to wreak a grudge of seventeen years.
ref: 1841, Thomas Macaulay, Warren Hastings:
glosses: To chasten, or chastise/chastize, or castigate, or punish, or smite.
examples: text: their woe / Broods maddening inwardly and scorns to wreak / Itself abroad;
ref: 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night:
text: 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.
ref: 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:
text: 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.
ref: 1912 February–July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Under the Moons of Mars”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as “Love-making on Mars”, in A Princess of Mars, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., 1917 October, →OCLC, page 135:
glosses: To inflict or take vengeance on.
examples: text: Come wreak his loss, whom bootless ye complain.
ref: 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, for I[saac] Iaggard and M[atthew] Lownes, →OCLC:
glosses: To take vengeance for.
examples: text: She wreaked of liquor. She also wreaked of anger, despair and unsatisfied sexuality, all mixed together.
ref: 2007, Bruce Morse, Forgive Myself:
glosses: Misspelling of reek.
Derived terms: wreak havoc