A Word, Please: The torturous difference between ‘rack’ and ‘wrack’

If you’re the kind of person who chooses words carefully, that’s a good thing. Precise language begets precise communication, which improves the odds you’ll get your point across. But there’s a price to pay for that caution: insecurity, like the self-doubt I’m racked with every time I have to choose between “rack” and “wrack.”

Do you wrack your brain or rack it?

Are you racked with guilt or wracked?

Are these questions nerve-wracking or nerve-racking?

Faced with these questions, I forget what I once learned. Rather than get it wrong or (heaven forbid) take the time to look it up, I just avoid these phrases altogether.

Turns out, that’s not a bad strategy. Though their origins point to different meanings, “wrack” and “rack” are often interchangeable today. But folks who choose their words carefully might want to keep the original meanings in mind.

“Rack” originates from a noun referring to a Medieval torture device, with the verb evolving to mean torture, strain or wreck. “Wrack” was born as a nautical term meaning, essentially, “wreck.”

“This etymology explains why the word is ‘nerve-racking’ rather than ‘nerve-wracking,’” insists Theodore Bernstein’s 1965 guide “The Careful Writer.” “Something that is nerve-racking does not wreck the nerves, it merely strains or tortures them.”

“Wrack,” by this reasoning, isn’t very useful — limited mainly to talk of ships and things that can be similarly wrecked: like a “storm-wracked vessel” or, from that, “wrack and ruin.”

Beware any usage guide that, like Bernstein, speaks in absolutes. Sometimes, their prohibitions are correct. But more often, the writer is a little drunk with power, demanding that good advice be treated as a hard rule.

In the real world, “rack” and “wrack” aren’t so simple. For more than a century, leading language experts have been doling out contradictory advice. Some, like Bernstein, say to keep these words separate and true to their origins.

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Others say “wrack” is dead and to just use “rack” no matter your meaning. Though “wrack” is most certainly not dead (in fact, it has gotten a little more popular in the last 30 to 40 years), it wouldn’t be so bad to follow this advice. After all, how often do you talk about ships destroyed by storms?

Still other authorities, notably the official style guide of the New York Times, say to avoid both words and instead just find a more modern synonym.

So if you like taking orders from bossy types, you’ll have to choose: Keep the words separate, strike “wrack” completely from your vocabulary, or strike both “wrack” and “rack” (as verbs) from your vocabulary.

Luckily, you don’t have to let any of these self-appointed rule-makers push you around. If you want to hew closely to the original definitions, you can rest assured that your choice won’t offend any readers. That’s what I try to remember to do. But if you don’t want to worry about it, you don’t have to.

“‘Rack’ and ‘wrack’ in ‘(w)rack one’s brain’ and ‘nerve-(w)racking’ have been used interchangeably since the late 19th century, and both spellings are commonly encountered today in edited prose,” write the editors of Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary. As a result, both spellings are now acceptable: “‘wrack’ has so often been used as a variant spelling of ‘rack,’ especially when used in the phrases ‘(w)rack one’s brain’ and ‘(w)racked with pain,’ that many dictionaries now list it as a variant.”

So while “rack your brain,” “racked with guilt” and “nerve-racking” are the safest choices, you still get to choose.

June Casagrande is the author of “The Joy of Syntax: A Simple Guide to All the Grammar You Know You Should Know.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.