wrest
Part of speech: verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: entertainment
lifestyle
music
Etymology: 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.
Inflected forms:
form: wrests
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: wresting
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: wrested
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: wrested
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: To pull or twist violently.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
gloss: To obtain by pulling or violent force.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: 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?
Does the devil strive to keep Christ out of men's hearts, and to preserve his own influence over them, by the weapon of ignorance? Christ wrests it from him by letting in a stream of light.
Despite this short shrift from descendants and historians, the Jewish peddler was a valued person in rural life. Besides bringing much-needed goods and a break for those exhausted from plowing or laboriously wresting turpentine from pine trees, the visiting peddler was often respected by those God-fearing southerners for what they believed was his direct connection to the Old Testament stories they revered.
gloss: To seize.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
transitive
examples: [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; [...]
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] Hastings; [...]
There was one of the tribe of Tarzan who questioned his authority, and that was Terkoz, the son of Tublat, but he so feared the keen knife and the deadly arrows of his new lord that he confined the manifestation of his objections to petty disobediences and irritating mannerisms; Tarzan knew, however, that he but waited his opportunity to wrest the kingship from him by some sudden stroke of treachery, and so he was ever on his guard against surprise.
gloss: To distort, to pervert, to twist.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
transitive
examples: 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.
Thou ſhalt not wreſt the iudgement of thy poore in his cauſe.
And herein is especially displayed the profound, the merciful, and at the same time the righteous discrimination between men, equally involved in ruin; or that decree of election and reprobation, revealed in the Word of God, which, though men of perverse, impure, and unstable minds wrest it to their own destruction, yet to holy and pious souls affords unspeakable consolation.
[I]n the ſeveral Ages of the Church theſe Wretches ſucceſſively have been ſome of the moſt notorious Oppoſers of the Divinity of our Saviour, and would undoubtedly have overthrown the Belief of it in the World, could they by all their Arts of wreſting, corrupting, and falſe interpreting the holy Text, have brought the Scriptures to ſpeak for them; which they could never yet do.
gloss: To tune with a wrest, or key.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: The Harpe. A harpe geueth ſounde as it is ſette / The harper may wreſt it vntunablye
Related words: wrestle
Derived words: outwrest
overwrest
wrester
Translations: