wreak
/ɹik/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.94 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "The earthquake wreaked havoc in the city."
- "She wreaked her anger on his car."
- "On the Saturday, October 1, the torrential rains began to wreak damage east of Exeter."
- "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."
- "The police abused their authority to wreak an innocent."
- "The criminal has been wreaked by the Judge to spend a year in prison."
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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: wreken, wrecan, *wrekan, *wrekaną, *wreg-, wreke
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ɹik/
- British English: /ɹiːk/