Wrath

How to spell wrath

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce wrath

What does wrath mean?

1. nounExtreme or vengeful anger; fierce indignation.

Wrath in a sentence

• The manager unleashed his wrath on the team after the missed deadline.

• She feared the wrath of her landlord when the rent was late again.

Where does wrath come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Wrath is a native English word, descending from the Old English noun wrǣþþo, which meant anger or fury and was formed from the adjective wrāþ, meaning 'angry' or 'sorely displeased' (the source of the older English word 'wroth'). Both of these go back to a Germanic root meaning 'to twist' or 'to bend', the same idea that gives us the verb 'writhe': anger was pictured as something that twists or contorts a person. The spelling kept its old 'wr-' cluster, in which the 'w' is now silent, a fossil of a time when both letters were actually pronounced, and this silent 'w' is the main trap for writers today. The final '-th' sound, written with the digraph 'th', has stayed remarkably stable since Anglo-Saxon times. The word has long carried a weighty, almost biblical tone, which is why it survives chiefly in solemn or dramatic phrasing rather than casual speech.

How the word is built

• wrath (from Old English wrǣþþo: anger, fury, related to wrāþ 'wroth, angry')