rack

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See also: Rack, RACK, and räck

English

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Pronunciation

Etymology 1

From Middle English rakke, rekke, from Middle Dutch rac, recke, rec (Dutch rek), see rekken.

Noun

rack (plural racks)

  1. A series of one or more shelves, stacked one above the other
  2. Any of various kinds of frame for holding clothes, bottles, animal fodder, mined ore, shot on a vessel, etc.
  3. (cycling) A frame on the back or front of a bike that enables fastening of luggage.
  4. (nautical) A piece or frame of wood, having several sheaves, through which the running rigging passes.
  5. (nautical, slang) A bunk.
    • 2008, Byron L. Smith, Prescription Music, →ISBN, page 33:
      Chief Stevens approached my rack and repeatedly ordered me to vacate my rack and report to the working party.
    • 2010, Herb Brewer, Chronicles of a Marine Rifleman: Vietnam, 1965-1966, →ISBN, page 171:
      By the time I had unpacked my sea bag, made my rack, and finished a good long hot shower, it was late in the evening.
    • 2016, Cpl. Osborn R. E, Like Killing Rats, →ISBN:
      I took off my helmet, sat it gently down at the head of my rack on the wooden deck, plopped my butt down on my rack again, and began taking off my stateside assbusting boots.
  6. (nautical, slang, uncountable) Sleep.
  7. A distaff.
  8. (mechanical engineering) A bar with teeth on its face or edge, to work with those of a gearwheel, pinion, or worm, which is to drive or be driven by it.
  9. (mechanical engineering) A bar with teeth on its face or edge, to work with a pawl as a ratchet allowing movement in one direction only, used for example in a handbrake or crossbow.
  10. A device, incorporating a ratchet, used to torture victims by stretching them beyond their natural limits.
    • 1596-97, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III Scene 2
      Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack,
      Where men enforced do speak anything.
    • (Can we date this quote by Macaulay and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)
      During the troubles of the fifteenth century, a rack was introduced into the Tower, and was occasionally used under the plea of political necessity.
  11. A cranequin, a mechanism including a rack, pinion and pawl, providing both mechanical advantage and a ratchet, used to bend and cock a crossbow.
  12. A set of antlers (as on deer, moose or elk).
  13. A cut of meat involving several adjacent ribs.
    I bought a rack of lamb at the butcher's yesterday.
  14. (billiards, snooker) A hollow triangle used for aligning the balls at the start of a game.
  15. (slang, vulgar) A woman's breasts.
  16. (climbing, caving) A friction device for abseiling, consisting of a frame with five or more metal bars, around which the rope is threaded.
    rappel rack
    abseil rack
  17. (climbing, slang) A climber's set of equipment for setting up protection and belays, consisting of runners, slings, carabiners, nuts, Friends, etc.
    I used almost a full rack on the second pitch.
  18. A grate on which bacon is laid.
  19. (obsolete) That which is extorted; exaction.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir E. Sandys to this entry?)
  20. (algebra) A set with a distributive binary operation whose result is unique.
  21. (slang) A thousand pounds (£1,000), especially such proceeds of crime
Synonyms
Derived terms
Translations

Verb

rack (third-person singular simple present racks, present participle racking, simple past and past participle racked)

  1. To place in or hang on a rack.
  2. To torture (someone) on the rack.
    • (Can we date this quote by Alexander Pope and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)
      He was racked and miserably tormented.
    • 2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin 2012, p. 228:
      As the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt later recalled, his father, Henry VII's jewel-house keeper Henry Wyatt, had been racked on the orders of Richard III, who had sat there and watched.
  3. To cause (someone) to suffer pain.
    • (Can we date this quote by John Milton and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)
      Vaunting aloud but racked with deep despair.
  4. (figurative) To stretch or strain; to harass, or oppress by extortion.
    • c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:
      Try what my credit can in Venice do; / That shall be racked even to the uttermost.
    • (Can we date this quote by Edmund Spenser and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)
      The landlords there shamefully rack their tenants.
    • (Can we date this quote by Fuller and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)
      They rack a Scripture simile beyond the true intent thereof.
  5. (billiards, snooker, pool) To put the balls into the triangular rack and set them in place on the table.
  6. (slang) To strike a male in the testicles.
  7. To (manually) load (a round of ammunition) from the magazine or belt into firing position in an automatic or semiautomatic firearm.
  8. (mining) To wash (metals, ore, etc.) on a rack.
  9. (nautical) To bind together, as two ropes, with cross turns of yarn, marline, etc.
  10. To move the slide bar on a shotgun in order to chamber the next round
    If you're going to have to use it defensively, have the shotgun already loaded and ready for use. The last thing you want to have to do is rack the slide, which could give away your position, in which case it may very well be the last thing you ever do.
Usage notes

In senses “torture” and “suffer pain”, frequently confused with wrack (“destroy”) (more rarely, wrack (“wreckage”)), both as stand-alone verb and in compounds.[1] In most uses, rack is correct, and wrack is incorrect.[2] Etymologically, nerve-racking (“stressful”), pain-racked, and rack one's brain, rack one's brains (“think hard”) are correct, while rack and ruin and storm-racked are incorrect, variants of wrack and ruin (“complete destruction”) and storm-wracked (“wrecked by a storm”).

Usage guidance differs: either prefer the etymologically correct term, prefer rack to (archaic) wrack, or use either. The etymologically correct forms are preferred by some style guides,[3] but the unetymological forms are well-established and in wide use, and other style guides simply consider them variant spellings.[4] Other style guides categorically ban wrack as archaic, suggesting modern synonyms like wreck, ruin, or destroy.[5] In some cases style guides are confused by the etymology, or feature unhistorical forms such as nerve-wracking.[6]

This confusion dates to Early Modern English in the 16th century (as in rack and ruin), and is presumably due to the influence of ⟨wr⟩ in words such as wreak, wreck, wrench, etc., which connote discomfort and torment.[7] Formally termed the graphaesthesia of the graphaestheme ⟨wr⟩, since identical sound /r/ to ⟨r⟩; compare with phonaesthesia.[8] Compare rapt/wrapt, and also ⟨gh⟩ as in ghost, ghastly, ghoul.

Derived terms
Translations

Etymology 2

From Old English reċċan (“to stretch out, extend”).

Verb

rack (third-person singular simple present racks, present participle racking, simple past and past participle racked)

  1. To stretch a person's joints.
Derived terms
Translations

Etymology 3

From Middle English reken, from Old Norse reka (“to be drifted, tost”)[9]

The noun is from Middle English rak, rakke, from Middle English rek (“drift; thing tossed ashore; jetsam”), from the verb.

Verb

rack (third-person singular simple present racks, present participle racking, simple past and past participle racked)

  1. To drive; move; go forward rapidly; stir
  2. To fly, as vapour or broken clouds
Translations

Noun

rack (uncountable)

  1. Thin, flying, broken clouds, or any portion of floating vapour in the sky.
    • 1669, Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum or A Natural History in ten Centuries, page 32:
      The winds in the upper region, which move the clouds above, which we call the rack, […] pass without noise.
    • (Can we date this quote by Charles Kingsley and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)
      And the night rack came rolling up.
    • 1607, William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV, scene 14
      Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish ... That which is now a horse ... The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct

Etymology 4

From Middle English rakken.

Verb

rack (third-person singular simple present racks, present participle racking, simple past and past participle racked)

  1. (brewing) To clarify, and thereby deter further fermentation of, beer, wine or cider by draining or siphoning it from the dregs.
    • (Can we date this quote by Francis Bacon and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)
      It is in common practice to draw wine or beer from the lees (which we call racking), whereby it will clarify much the sooner.
Translations

Etymology 5

See rack (“that which stretches”), or rock (verb).

Verb

rack (third-person singular simple present racks, present participle racking, simple past and past participle racked)

  1. (of a horse) To amble fast, causing a rocking or swaying motion of the body; to pace.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Fuller to this entry?)

Noun

rack (plural racks)

  1. A fast amble.

Etymology 6

See wreck.

Noun

rack (plural racks)

  1. (obsolete) A wreck; destruction.
    • (Can we date this quote by Samuel Pepys and provide title, author’s full name, and other details?)
      All goes to rack.
Derived terms

Etymology 7

Noun

rack (plural racks)

  1. (obsolete) A young rabbit, or its skin.
    • 1869 February 13, “Rabbit Skin”, in All the Year Round, page 247:
      Now, sir, you would say a skin is a skin, we say it is a ' whole,' or a 'half,' or a 'quarter,' or a 'rack,' or a 'sucker. Suckers are skins of infant rabbits, and of little value. Eight racks are equal to one whole.
    • 1879, Ure's Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, page 380:
      The skin of a sucker is white, of a quarter, black and white striped, of a rack all black, and of a best all white.
    • 1882, Bees, rabbits, and pigeons; how to breed and how to rear them:
      Those would be of different shades of colour according to the time of year at which they were produced, those bred about May-day undergoing no change from their white colour, but from a white rack become a whole skin; […]
    • 1892, Henry Poland, Fur-bearing Animals in Nature and in Commerce, page 289:
      Rabbit skins are sorted into wholes, halves, quarters, racks, and suckers, or very small skins.

Etymology 8

Noun

rack

  1. Alternative form of arak

References

  1. ^ Garner’s Modern American Usage
  2. ^ Charles Harrington Elster (2010) The Accidents of Style: Good Advice on How Not to Write Badly, pages 169–170: “In all other familiar contexts, the proper spelling is rack.”
  3. ^ “rack/wrack”, The Mavens’ Word of the Day, April 20, 1998
  4. ^ Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, 1994:
    “Probably the most sensible attitude would be to ignore the etymologies of rack and wrack (which, of course, is exactly what most people do) and regard them simply as spelling variants of one word. If you choose to toe the line drawn by the commentators, however, you will want to write nerve-racking, rack one’s brains, storm-wracked, and for good measure wrack and ruin. Then you will have nothing to worry about being criticized for — except, of course, for using too many clichés.”
  5. ^ The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, 5th edition, “wrack”, 2015
  6. ^ Lua error in Module:languages/errorGetBy at line 16: Please specify a language or etymology language code in the parameter "1"; the value "2015" is not valid (see Wiktionary:List of languages).
  7. ^ Kay, Christian J. and Wotherspoon, Irené. 2002. “Wreak, wrack, rack, and (w)ruin: the History of Some Confused Spellings”, in Sounds, Words, Texts and Change: Papers from 11 ICEHL, ed. by Teresa Fanego, Belen Mendez-Naya and Elena Seoane. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 129–143.
  8. ^ Kay & Wotherspoon, 2002, p. 139 and footnotes 8 and 9, pp. 141–142
  9. ^ “rack”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

Spanish

Noun

rack m (plural racks)

  1. rack
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