Wreck

How to spell wreck

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce wreck

What does wreck mean?

1. verbTo destroy, badly damage, or ruin something.
2. nounSomething that has been badly damaged or destroyed, such as a crashed vehicle, sunken ship, or a person in poor condition.

Wreck in a sentence

• verb

  One careless decision could wreck years of careful planning.

• noun

  Divers explored the rusting wreck on the seabed.

• verb

  A sudden storm can wreck a small fishing boat.

• noun

  The car was a complete wreck after the collision.

Where does wreck come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Wreck entered English in the medieval period through Anglo-Norman wrec, a legal term for goods and timbers cast up on the shore after a ship was lost at sea. Behind that lay the Old Norse root rek, meaning something driven or cast ashore, which itself came from the verb reka, 'to drive' or 'to thrust'. That same driving sense connects wreck to its close relative 'wreak', as in to wreak havoc, since both spring from the idea of force being applied. The earliest English uses were tied firmly to shipping and salvage law before the word broadened to mean any ruined vessel and then any act of destruction. The silent initial w-, no longer pronounced, survives from this Germanic and Norse ancestry and is precisely the letter that trips writers, since the word sounds exactly like 'reck'.

How the word is built

• wreck (whole root word; the silent initial w- preserves its Norse/Germanic origin)