Racks

How to spell racks

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce racks

What does racks mean?

1. nounOpen frameworks or sets of shelves used for holding, hanging, or storing objects.
2. verbCauses great physical or mental strain or pain to someone or something.

Racks in a sentence

• noun

  The warehouse racks were stacked with boxes of stock.

• verb

  A deep cough racks his chest every winter morning.

• noun

  The bike racks outside the station filled up before nine.

• verb

  Worry about the deadline racks her until the report is finished.

Where does racks come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

The base word 'rack' comes into English from the continental Germanic languages, most likely Middle Dutch 'rec' or Middle Low German 'rik', meaning a bar, framework, or rail on which things could be hung or stretched. The literal idea was a straight horizontal piece on which goods, clothing, or hides were laid out, and that sense of an open framework for holding objects survives directly in modern uses like a coat rack or a luggage rack. A grimmer branch developed when the word named the medieval instrument of torture that stretched a victim's body, which is why 'to rack' came to mean to strain or torment, as in racking one's brains. The added 's' simply marks either the plural of the noun (several frames) or the present-tense third-person verb (he racks). It is worth keeping 'racks' distinct from the much rarer 'wracks', which relates to wreckage and ruin and is a separate though sometimes blurred word.

How the word is built

• rack (frame; from Middle Dutch rec)
• -s (plural noun / third-person singular verb)