wrake means suffering which comes as a result of vengeance or retribution. It carries an Arena rating of 1661, earned across 51 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, wrake ranks #425 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #1,438 of 17,128 for Most Ponderous Words, #1,894 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #2,251 of 17,104 for Most Storied Words.
wrake is pronounced /ɹeɪk/.
Why “wrake” is a great word
WRAKE — [Noun] The state of suffering, ruin, or desolation that results from vengeance or retribution. From Middle English wrake (“vengeance, persecution, injury”), from Old English wracu (“revenge, persecution, misery”), from Proto-Germanic *wrakō, related to *wrēkō (“persecution, revenge”). Unlike vengeance, which focuses on the punitive act, or wreck, which denotes physical collapse, wrake names the consequence made manifest—the suffering endured and the hollow left behind. It is the scorched earth after the army’s passing, the hollow silence in a house emptied by feud, the cold ash that was once a home—the grim shape justice takes when it becomes indistinguishable from the ruin it sought to repay.
Etymology
From Middle English wrake (“vengeance, persecution, injury”), from Old English wracu (“revenge, persecution, misery, etc.”), from Proto-Germanic *wrakō, likely related to *wrēkō (“persecution, revenge, vengeance”). Cognate with Gothic 𐍅𐍂𐌰𐌺𐌰 (wraka, “persecution”), Middle Low German wrake and Middle Dutch wrake.
noun
- Suffering which comes as a result of vengeance or retribution.
- Wrecked state or condition; destruction, ruin.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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