wrest
Plural: wrests
Verb
Verb Forms: wrested, wresting, wrests
- To pull, twist, or seize forcibly.
- obtain by seizing forcibly or violently, also metaphorically
- "wrest the knife from his hands"
- "wrest a meaning from the old text"
- "wrest power from the old government"
- To pull or twist violently.
- To obtain by pulling or violent force.
- To seize.
- To distort, to pervert, to twist.
- To tune with a wrest, or key.
Noun
- The act of wresting; a wrench or twist; distortion.
- A key to tune a stringed instrument.
- Active or motive power.
- Ellipsis 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.
- A 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.
Examples
- He wrested the remote control from my grasp and changed the channel.
- She managed to wrest control of the board by playing a bingo on a triple-word score.
Origin / Etymology
From 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.
Scrabble Score: 8
wrest: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordwrest: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
wrest: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary