Wrestle

How to spell wrestle

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce wrestle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wrestle mean?

1. verbTo grapple with an opponent by gripping and trying to force them down, or more broadly to struggle hard with a difficulty.

Wrestle in a sentence

• The two boys would often wrestle on the gym mats after class.

• Accountants wrestle with the new tax rules every spring.

Where does wrestle come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English word that goes all the way back to the Old English verb wraestlian, a frequentative form built on wraestan, meaning 'to twist, wrench or pull violently'. The frequentative ending signalled an action done repeatedly or with effort, which fits the back-and-forth grappling of two struggling bodies perfectly. The plain root survives today as the verb 'wrest', as when you wrest something from someone's grip, and wrestle is simply its busier cousin. The silent initial 'w', which is the spelling trap, is a fossil from a time when English speakers actually pronounced the 'wr' cluster, the same ghost letter that haunts 'write', 'wrist' and 'wrong'. By the medieval period the sound had faded but the spelling stayed, and the word also broadened from purely physical combat to the figurative sense of struggling hard with a problem or decision.

How the word is built

• wrest (to twist or wrench)
• -le (frequentative verb suffix indicating repeated action)