WRACK • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Wrack

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/ræk/ Listen

noun

Wrack n. A thin, flying cloud; a rack.

Wrack n.

1.

Wreck; ruin; destruction. (Obs.) "A world devote to universal wrack."

2.

Any marine vegetation cast up on the shore, especially plants of the genera Fucus, Laminaria, and Zostera, which are most abundant on northern shores.

3.

(Bot.) Coarse seaweed of any kind.

Wrack grass, or Grass wrack (Bot.), eelgrass.

Wreck n. (Written also wrack)

1.

The destruction or injury of a vessel by being cast on shore, or on rocks, or by being disabled or sunk by the force of winds or waves; shipwreck. "Hard and obstinate As is a rock amidst the raging floods, 'Gainst which a ship, of succor desolate, Doth suffer wreck, both of herself and goods."

2.

Destruction or injury of anything, especially by violence; ruin; as, the wreck of a railroad train. "The wreck of matter and the crush of worlds." "Its intellectual life was thus able to go on amidst the wreck of its political life."

3.

The ruins of a ship stranded; a ship dashed against rocks or land, and broken, or otherwise rendered useless, by violence and fracture; as, they burned the wreck.

4.

The remain of anything ruined or fatally injured. "To the fair haven of my native home, The wreck of what I was, fatigued I come."

5.

(Law) Goods, etc., which, after a shipwreck, are cast upon the land by the sea.

verb

Wrack v. t. To rack; to torment. (R.)

Wrack v. t. To wreck. (Obs.)

See images of 'Wrack'

Etymology of 'Wrack'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Wrack" Quotes from Famous Books

... hand divine—there's not a gem Wrought by man's art to be compared to them; Soft, brilliant, tender, through the wave they glow, And make the moonbeam brighter where they flow. Involved in sea-wrack, here you find a race Which science, doubting, knows not where to place; On shell or stone is dropp'd the embryo-seed, And quickly vegetates a vital breed. While thus with pleasing wonder you inspect Treasures the vulgar in their scorn reject, See as they float ...

— The Borough • George Crabbe

... to the realms which he coasted! for there Was shedding of blood and rending of hair, Rape of maiden and slaughter of priest, Gathering of ravens and wolves to the feast; When he hoisted his standard black, Before him was battle, behind him wrack, And he burned the churches, that heathen Dane, To light his band ...

— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... a wild, cold, seasonable night of March, with a pale moon, lying on her back as though the wind had tilted her, and a flying wrack of the most diaphanous and lawny texture. The wind made talking difficult, and flecked the blood into the face. It seemed to have swept the streets unusually bare of passengers, besides; for Mr. Utterson thought he had never seen that part of ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... upon the night of the 11th we fairly entered upon that por- tion of the Atlantic which is known as the Sargasso Sea. An extensive tract of water is this, inclosed by the warm current of the Gulf Stream, and thickly covered with the wrack, called by the Spaniards "sargasso," the abundance of which so seriously impeded the progress of Columbus's ...

— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... their sides a copious mucus, which makes them as disagreeable to handle as they are unsightly to look at. Mackerel and cod are the hag's principal victims; but often the fisherman draws up a hag-eaten haddock on the end of his line, of which not a wrack remains but the hollow shell or bare outer simulacrum. As many as twenty of these disgusting parasites have sometimes been found within the ...

— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

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