Arack for weights in a gym
A dishrack holding some plates
A
rack (
sense 12) of lamb in a butcher's shop
FromMiddle Englishrakke,rekke, fromMiddle Dutchrac,recke,rec (Dutchrek), seerekken.
rack (pluralracks)
- A series of one or moreshelves, stacked one above the other
- Any of various kinds offrame for holdingluggage or other objects on avehicle orvessel.
- Synonym:luggage rack
- (historical) A device, incorporating aratchet, used to torture victims by stretching them beyond their natural limits.
c.1596–1598 (date written),William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, inMr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, andEd[ward] Blount, published1623,→OCLC,[Act III, scene ii]:Ay, but I fear you speak upon therack, / Where men enforced do speak anything.
1849–1861,Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter I, inThe History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume(please specify |volume=I to V), London:Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans,→OCLC:During the troubles of the fifteenth century, arack was introduced into the Tower, and was occasionally used under the plea of political necessity.
- (nautical) A piece or frame of wood, having severalsheaves, through which the runningrigging passes.
- Synonym:rack block
- (nautical, slang) Abunk.
2008, Byron L. Smith,Prescription Music,→ISBN, page33:Chief Stevens approached myrack and repeatedly ordered me to vacate myrack and report to the working party.
2010, Herb Brewer,Chronicles of a Marine Rifleman: Vietnam, 1965-1966,→ISBN, page171:By the time I had unpacked my sea bag, made myrack, and finished a good long hot shower, it was late in the evening.
2016, Cpl. Osborn R. E,Like Killing Rats,→ISBN:I took off my helmet, sat it gently down at the head of myrack on the wooden deck, plopped my butt down on myrack again, and began taking off my stateside assbusting boots.
- (nautical, by extension, slang, uncountable)Sleep.
- Adistaff.
- (mechanical engineering, rail transport) Abar withteeth on its face or edge, to work with those of agearwheel,pinion, orworm, which is todrive or be driven by it.
1950 November, H. P. White, “The Furka-Oberalp Railway”, inRailway Magazine, page767:Just beyond that station the first step is encountered and therack resorted to, taking the line on a gradient of 1 in 9 over a steeply inclined bridge and through a spiral tunnel.
1960 December, 'Voyageur', “The Mountain Railways of the Bernese Oberland”, inTrains Illustrated, page750:The ladder-type Riggenbachrack is the one in use on both systems.
- (mechanical engineering) A bar with teeth on its face or edge, to work with apawl as aratchet allowing movement in one direction only, used for example in ahandbrake orcrossbow.
- Acranequin, a mechanism including a rack, pinion and pawl, providing bothmechanical advantage and a ratchet, used tobend andcock acrossbow.
- A set ofantlers (as on deer, moose or elk).
- A cut ofmeat involving several adjacentribs.
I bought arack of lamb at the butcher's yesterday.
- (obsolete) Abone of ahorse.
- 1722, William Gibson,The Farrier's New Guide (page 65)
- ThePar quadratum […] Their Use is to bend theRacks of the Loins with a right Motion forward or downward, but when one only acts, it draws the Loins to one Side somewhat downwards.
- 1873, John Camden Hotten,Slang Dictionary
- Racks, the bones of a dead horse. Term used by horse-slaughterers.
- (billiards, snooker) A hollow triangle used for aligning the balls at the start of a game.
- (gambling) A plastictray used for holding and movingchips.
- (slang, vulgar) A woman'sbreasts.
- Synonyms:seeThesaurus:breasts
- (climbing, caving) A friction device forabseiling, consisting of a frame with five or more metal bars, around which the rope is threaded.
rappelrack
abseilrack
- (climbing, slang) A climber's set of equipment for setting upprotection andbelays, consisting ofrunners,slings,carabiners,nuts,Friends, etc.
I used almost a fullrack on the second pitch.
- Agrate on whichbacon is laid.
- (algebra) A set with adistributivebinaryoperation whose result isunique.
- (slang) Athousanddollars, especially if theproceeds are from acrime.
series of shelves
- Arabic:مَكْتَبَة شَخْصِيَّة(maktaba(t) šaḵṣiyya)
- Armenian:please add this translation if you can
- Basque:apal
- Breton:estajerenn
- Bulgarian:стелаж m(stelaž)
- Chinese:
- Mandarin:架子 (zh)(jiàzi)
- Dutch:rek (nl) n,schap (nl) n
- Esperanto:rako
- Finnish:hyllykkö (fi),hylly (fi),teline (fi),räkki (fi)
- French:étagère (fr)
- Georgian:please add this translation if you can
- German:Regal (de) n
- Irish:raca m,aidhleann f(for tools, utensils),alchaing f(literary; for weapons, utensils, etc.)
- Italian:rastrelliera (it) f
- Khmer:ធ្នើរ (km)(thnəə)
- Latin:pluteus m
- Mongolian:please add this translation if you can
- Persian:قفسه (fa)(qafase)
- Polish:regał (pl) m
- Portuguese:estante (pt) f,armário (pt) m,compartimentos m pl
- Romanian:raft (ro) n,etajeră (ro) f
- Russian:этаже́рка (ru) f(etažérka),стелла́ж (ru) m(stelláž),по́лка (ru) f(pólka)
- Spanish:estante (es),repisa (es) f
- Thai:please add this translation if you can
- Vietnamese:giá (vi)
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frame for hanging objects
FromOld Englishreċċan(“to stretch out, extend”).
rack (third-person singular simple presentracks,present participleracking,simple past and past participleracked)
- To place in or hang on arack.
- Totorture (someone) on therack.
2011, Thomas Penn,Winter King, Penguin, published2012, page228:As the poet SirThomas Wyatt later recalled, his father, Henry VII's jewel-house keeper Henry Wyatt, had beenracked on the orders of Richard III, who had sat there and watched.
- To cause (someone) tosuffer pain.
- Synonyms:torment,torture;see alsoThesaurus:hurt
1667,John Milton, “Book I”, inParadise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […];[a]nd by Robert Boulter […];[a]nd Matthias Walker, […],→OCLC; republished asParadise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […],1873,→OCLC:Vaunting aloud butracked with deep despair.
- (figurative) Tostretch orstrain; toharass, oroppress byextortion.
c.1596–1598 (date written),William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, inMr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, andEd[ward] Blount, published1623,→OCLC,[Act I, scene i]:Try what my credit can in Venice do; / That shall beracked even to the uttermost.
1596 (date written; published1633),Edmund Spenser,A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande […], Dublin: […] Societie of Stationers, […],→OCLC; republished asA View of the State of Ireland […] (Ancient Irish Histories), Dublin: […] Society of Stationers, […] Hibernia Press, […] [b]y John Morrison,1809,→OCLC:The landlords there most shamefullyrack their tenants.
1645, Thomas Fuller, “Scripture Observations”, inGood Thoughts in Bad Times, […], Exeter, Devon: […] Thomas Hunt,→OCLC, section I,page69:Grant that I may neverrack a ScriptureSimilie, beyond the true intent thereof.
- (billiards, snooker, pool) To put the balls into the triangularrack and set them in place on the table.
- Synonym:rack up
- (slang, transitive) To strike in thetesticles.
1999 November 2, Squad Leader, “CUPS Required for Gym Class?”, inalt.support.jock-strap[1] (Usenet):Bike7125 raises a great point suggesting that cups could have been recommended "optional" equipment in school PE. I never gotracked by a baseball or softball, but we did have a gym teacher, who insisted on a weekly session of a "cruelty sport" called bombardment. The idea was to throw basketballs at a line of guys, and try to hit them. (Guess where most gym bullys aimed!)
- (slang) Toshoplift (especially in amegastore), often by taking off of arack.
Heracked three boxes of gum!
2007 May 4, streetwords,Urban Dictionary[2]:my buddy used to goracking for spray paint at the home despot. then a banger shot him in the head one night.[sic]
- (by extension) Totake that which belongs to another, without regard ofright orpermission.
- Synonym:steal
- (firearms) To (manually) load (a round ofammunition) from the magazine or belt into firing position in an automatic or semiautomatic firearm.
- (firearms) To move the slide bar on ashotgun in order to chamber the next round.
- (mining) To wash (metals, ore, etc.) on arack.
- (nautical) To bind together, as two ropes, with cross turns of yarn,marline, etc.
- (structural engineering) To tend to shear a structure (that is, force it to bend, lean, or move in different directions at different points).
- Synonym:shear
Post-and-lintel constructionracks easily.
1977, Roger L. Tuomi, David S. Gromala, “Racking Strength of Walls”, inUSDA Forest Service Research Paper[3], numberFPL 301:The racking strength of a wall system is defined in terms of its ability to resist horizontal inplane shear forces. The shear, orracking, forces which act on wail systems arise primarily from wind.
In senses “torture” and “suffer pain”, frequently confused withwrack(“destroy”) (more rarely,wrack(“wreckage”)), both as stand-alone verb and in compounds.[1] In most uses,rack is correct, andwrack is incorrect.[2] Etymologically,nerve-racking(“stressful”),pain-racked, andrack one's brain,rack one's brains(“think hard”) are correct, whilerack and ruin andstorm-racked are incorrect variants ofwrack and ruin(“complete destruction”) andstorm-wracked(“wrecked by a storm”).
Usage guidance differs: either prefer the etymologically correct term, preferrack to (archaic)wrack, or use either. The etymologically correct forms are preferred by some style guides,[3] but the unetymological forms are well-established and in wide use, and other style guides simply consider them variant spellings.[4] Other style guides categorically banwrack as archaic, suggesting modern synonyms likewreck,ruin, ordestroy.[5] In some cases style guides are confused by the etymology, or feature unhistorical forms such asnerve-wracking.[6]
This confusion dates to Early Modern English in the 16th century (as inrack and ruin), and is presumably due to the influence of ⟨wr⟩ in words such aswreak,wreck,wrench, etc., which connote discomfort and torment.[7] Formally termed thegraphaesthesia of thegraphaestheme ⟨wr⟩, since identical sound /r/ to ⟨r⟩; compare withphonaesthesia.[8] Comparerapt/wrapt, and also ⟨gh⟩ as inghost andghastly.
to cause someone to suffer pain as from the effects of disease
to place or hang on a rack
stretch joints of a person
billiards, snooker, pool: to place the balls in a triangular rack on the table
slang: to strike a person in the testicles
FromMiddle Englishreken, fromOld Norsereka(“to be drifted,tost”)[9]
The noun is fromMiddle Englishrak,rakke, fromMiddle Englishrek(“drift; thing tossed ashore; jetsam”), from the verb.
rack (third-person singular simple presentracks,present participleracking,simple past and past participleracked)
- Todrive;move; go forward rapidly;stir.
- To fly, as vapour or broken clouds.
To fly, as vapour or broken clouds
rack (uncountable)
- Thin, flying, broken clouds, or any portion of floating vapour in the sky.
1669, Francis Bacon,Sylva Sylvarum or A Natural History in ten Centuries, page32:The winds in the upper region, which move the clouds above, which we call therack,[…] pass without noise.
c.1606–1607 (date written),William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, inMr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, andEd[ward] Blount, published1623,→OCLC,[Act IV, scene xiv]:Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish ... That which is now a horse ... Therack dislimns, and makes it indistinct
FromMiddle Englishrakken.
rack (third-person singular simple presentracks,present participleracking,simple past and past participleracked)
- (brewing) Toclarify, and thereby deter furtherfermentation of, beer, wine or cider by draining orsiphoning it from thedregs.
1627 (indicated as1626),Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or |century=I to X)”, inSylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […];[p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […],→OCLC:It is in common practice to draw wine or beer from the lees (which we callracking), whereby it will clarify much the sooner.
1987, Keith Dunstan,The Amber Nectar, Ringwood: Vicking O'Neil, page108:The Darwin administrator, J.C. Archer, with great ceremony, turned on the flow torack the precious golden stuff into casks.
brewing: to clarify by draining or siphoning from the dregs
Seerack(“that which stretches”), orrock(verb).
rack (third-person singular simple presentracks,present participleracking,simple past and past participleracked)
- (of a horse) Toamble fast, causing a rocking or swaying motion of the body; topace.
1655,Thomas Fuller,The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […],→OCLC,(please specify |book=I to XI):The other two (onlyracking, no thorough-paced protestants) watched their opportunity to run away
rack (pluralracks)
- A fastamble.
Seewreck.
rack (pluralracks)
- (obsolete) Awreck;destruction.
1665 September 19 (date written; Gregorian calendar),Samuel Pepys,Mynors Bright, transcriber, “September 9th, 1665”, inHenry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor,The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume V, London:George Bell & Sons […]; Cambridge:Deighton Bell & Co., published1895,→OCLC:All goes torack.
Uncertain. Perhaps a contraction ofrabbock, an alteration ( +-ock) ofrabbit.
rack (pluralracks)
- (obsolete) Ayoungrabbit, or itsskin.
1869 February 13, “Rabbit Skin”, inAll the Year Round, page247:Now, sir, you would say a skin is a skin, we say it is a ' whole,' or a 'half,' or a 'quarter,' or a 'rack,' or a 'sucker. Suckers are skins of infant rabbits, and of little value. Eightracks are equal to one whole.
1879,Ure's Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, page380:The skin of a sucker is white, of a quarter, black and white striped, of arack all black, and of a best all white.
1882,Bees, rabbits, and pigeons; how to breed and how to rear them:Those would be of different shades of colour according to the time of year at which they were produced, those bred about May-day undergoing no change from their white colour, but from awhiterack become a whole skin;[…]
1892, Henry Poland,Fur-bearing Animals in Nature and in Commerce, page289:Rabbit skins are sorted into wholes, halves, quarters,racks, and suckers, or very small skins.
rack (uncountable)
- Alternative form ofarak
1907, George Manville Fenn,Trapped by Malays: A Tale of Bayonet and Kris, page347:If it was my officers wanted a stone jar ofrack or a dozen of bottled ale, I might manage 'em, but I'm nowhere with sacks.
- ^Bryan A[ndrew] Garner (2022) “rack; wrack”, inGarner’s Modern English Usage: The Authority on Grammar, Usage, and Style, 5th edition, New York, N.Y.:Oxford University Press,→ISBN,page919, column 2.
- ^Charles Harrington Elster (2010)The Accidents of Style: Good Advice on How Not to Write Badly, pages169–170: “In all other familiar contexts, the proper spelling israck.”
- ^“rack/wrack”, The Mavens’ Word of the Day, April 20, 1998
- ^Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, 1994:
“Probably the most sensible attitude would be to ignore the etymologies of rack and wrack (which, of course, is exactly what most people do) and regard them simply as spelling variants of one word. If you choose to toe the line drawn by the commentators, however, you will want to write nerve-racking, rack one’s brains, storm-wracked, and for good measure wrack and ruin. Then you will have nothing to worry about being criticized for — except, of course, for using too many clichés.” - ^The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, 5th edition,“wrack”,2015
- ^The Associated Press (2015)The Associated Press Stylebook 2015,“wrack”
- ^Kay, Christian J. and Wotherspoon, Irené. 2002. “Wreak, wrack, rack, and (w)ruin: the History of Some Confused Spellings”, inSounds, Words, Texts and Change: Papers from 11 ICEHL, ed. by Teresa Fanego, Belen Mendez-Naya and Elena Seoane. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp.129–143.
- ^Kay & Wotherspoon, 2002, p.139 and footnotes 8 and 9, pp.141–142
- ^“rack”, inWebster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.:G. & C. Merriam,1913,→OCLC.
Unadapted borrowing fromEnglishrack.
rack n (pluralrackuri)
- rack
rack m (pluralracks)
- rack
rack n
- arack (for holding electronic equipment)
- Synonym ofracket (considered erroneous by some – see the usage notes for that entry)
rack on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
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