Wrenching

How to spell wrenching

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wrenching

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wrenching mean?

1. adjectiveCausing sharp emotional pain or intense distress.
2. verbTwisting or pulling something violently with force.

Wrenching in a sentence

• adjective

  The final goodbye at the airport was absolutely wrenching.

• verb

  He was wrenching the rusted bolt loose with a heavy spanner.

• adjective

  The documentary about the famine made for wrenching viewing.

• verb

  She kept wrenching at the jammed car door until it finally opened.

Where does wrenching come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the verb 'wrench', which descends from the Old English wrencan, meaning 'to twist' or 'to wind'. That early sense lives on whenever you twist a bolt or wrench a stuck lid, and it is closely related to the noun 'wrinkle', since both involve something being twisted out of its smooth line. The silent 'w' at the front is a fossil of Old English and early Middle English pronunciation, when the 'wr' cluster really was sounded with the lips before the 'r'; English kept the spelling long after the lips stopped moving, which is exactly why 'wrenching' looks stranger than it sounds. By the 1300s and 1400s the word had broadened from a literal twist to a figurative one, so that pulling something free and tearing at the emotions could share the same image. The modern adjectival sense, as in a heart-wrenching or gut-wrenching moment, simply carries that older twisting metaphor into the realm of feeling.

How the word is built

• wrench (twist or pull violently, from Old English wrencan)
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)