/ɹɛst/
OriginFrom Middle English wresten, wrasten, wræsten, from Old English wrǣstan (“to twist forcibly, wrench”), from Proto-Germanic *wraistijaną, (compare Proto-Germanic *wrīhaną (“to turn, wind; to cover, envelop”), *wrīþaną (“to weave, twist”), Old Norse reista (“to bend, twist”)), from a derivative of Proto-Indo-European *wreiḱ-, *wreyḱ- (“to bend, twist”), *wreyt- (“to bend”). See also writhe, wry.
The noun is derived from the verb.
- transitiveTo pull or twist violently.
- transitiveTo obtain by pulling or violent force.
“He wrested the remote control from my grasp and changed the channel.”
“[D]id not ſhe / Of Timna [Delilah] firſt betray me, and reveal / The ſecret wreſted from me in her highth / Of Nuptial Love proteſt, carrying it ſtrait / To them who had corrupted her, my Spies, / And”
“Does the devil strive to keep Christ out of men's hearts, and to preserve his own influence over them, by the weapon of ignorance? Christ wrests it from him by letting in a stream of light.”
- figuratively, transitiveTo seize.
“[S]he was one of your ſoft ſpoken, canting, whining hypocrites, who with a truly jeſuitical art, could wreſt evil out of the moſt inoffenſive thought, word, look or action; [...]”
“But the arrival of the new members of council from England, naturally had the effect of uniting the old servants of the [East India] Company. [John] Clavering, [George Henry] Monson, and [Philip] Fran”
“There was one of the tribe of Tarzan who questioned his authority, and that was Terkoz, the son of Tublat, but he so feared the keen knife and the deadly arrows of his new lord that he confined the ma”
- figuratively, transitiveTo distort, to pervert, to twist.
“And I beſeech you / Wreſt once the Law to your authority, / To do a great right, do a little wrong, / And curbe this cruell deuill of his will.”
“Thou ſhalt not wreſt the iudgement of thy poore in his cauſe.”
“And herein is especially displayed the profound, the merciful, and at the same time the righteous discrimination between men, equally involved in ruin; or that decree of election and reprobation, reve”
- transitiveTo tune with a wrest, or key.
“The Harpe. A harpe geueth ſounde as it is ſette / The harper may wreſt it vntunablye”
- The act of wresting; a wrench or twist; distortion.
“Whereas therefore it is concluded out of theſe ſo weak Premiſſes, that the retaining of divers things in the Church of England, which other Reformed Churches have caſt out, muſt needs argue that we do”
- A key to tune a stringed instrument.
“The Harpe. […] A harper with his wreſt maye tune the harpe wrong / Mys tunying of an Inſtrument ſhal hurt a true ſonge”
“The Minstrel […] wore round his neck a silver chain, by which hung the wrest, or key, with which he tuned his harp.”
- obsoleteActive or motive power.
“Adowne he keſt it with ſo puiſſant wreſt, / That backe againe it did alofte rebowned, / And gaue againſt his mother earth a gronefull ſownd.”
- abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis, obsolete, rareEllipsis of saw wrest (“a hand tool for setting the teeth of a saw, determining the width of the kerf”); a saw set.
- A partition in a water wheel by which the form of the buckets is determined.
“Fig. 6 is the outline of a wheel having 40 buckets. […] The partitions, which determine the form of the buckets, conſiſt of three different planes or boards AB, BC, CD, which are variouſly named by di”
- dated, dialectalA metal (formerly wooden) piece of some ploughs attached under the mouldboard (the curved blade that turns over the furrow) for clearing out the furrow; the mouldboard itself.
“[W]hen giving ley or stubble land a single furrow for a corn crop, the sock should never be so broad as the slice, but an inch or two within it; except, like the bent-sock it comes a good way back on ”
“They [turn-wrest ploughs] are now so constructed that the ploughman can readily shift his coulter by means of a lever, which reaches the bottom of the handles, and also his wrests or mould-boards from”
“The wedge is simply two inclined planes put base to base, and the same reasoning is true of it—that is, the thinner the wedge or more gradual the slope, the more easily it is driven. Applying this to ”
Formswrests(present, singular, third-person) · wresting(participle, present) · wrested(participle, past) · wrested(past) · wrests(plural)