WRACK • DICTIONARY ONE.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

... shuddering ice Shivers. It cracks! Like a wild beast in pain, it cries to the wrack Of the storm-cloud overhead. The sea answers back— Dread Lilith ...

— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier

... the incoming tide round Carnsore Point, and causing a nasty chopping sea; which, save in the sullen green hollows of the waves, was dead and lead-coloured as far as the eye could reach—as leaden, indeed, as the heavy grey sky overhead, where some fleecy floating clouds of lighter wrack, rapidly drifting across the darker background that lined the horizon all round, made the latter of a deeper tone by contrast, besides acting as the avant courier of a fresh squall—the wind just ...

— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... and deed alike are lost: Not a pillar nor a post In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; Not a head in white and black On a single fishing smack, In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris: rank on rank Search the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre, face and flank! You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve Riel. So, for better and for worse, Herve Riel, ...

— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... and without stop Pass downward thus! Again my eyes I raise To thee, dark rock; and through the mist and haze My strength returns when I behold thy prop Gleam stern and steady through the wavering wrack Surely thy strength is human, and like me Thou bearest loads of thunder on thy back! And, lo, a smile upon thy visage black— A breezy tuft of grass which I can see Waving serenely from ...

— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... of the net were curious; and as the cork line was drawn back flat on the sands, there was plenty of work for the men to pick off the net the masses of tangled fucus and bladder-wrack which had come up with the tide. Jelly-fish—great transparent discs with their strangely-coloured tentacles—were there by the dozen; pieces of floating wood, scraps of rope and canvas, and a couple of the curious squids with their suckers ...

— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

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