[lit-ideas] Re: rack & ruin
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Julie Krueger <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 14:23:01 -0330
Quoting Julie Krueger <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx>:
> I once jumped all over a speaker for using the phrase "wreck havoc" instead
> of "wreak havoc". I stand by that one. I found the below confusion
> interesting (confusion generally gets my attention):
I know the feeling. But I think I can go one better on the Socratic scale of
metacognition. I sometimes wonder whether my cognitive, conative and affective
capacities for attention are not themselves the true sources of the confusions
I believe to discover in the crooks and nannies my critical faculties identify
and address.
(No, I don't know what that really means either.)
Also important to emphasize in this context, however, is that the truth of the
hypothesis that an alligator won't attack you if you're carrying a flashlight
depends upon how quickly you carry the flashlight.
Clearly on a research term,
Walter O.
>
> From World Wide Words:
>
> 3. Q and A: Wrack or rack?
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> Q. Recently I had a discussion about "rack your brains" and "wrack
> your brains". The spelling seems to depend on whether one thinks the
> phrase derives from the rack, the medieval torture device, or from a
> variant of "wreak" or "wreck", to destroy. I side with the former,
> though I realize I have no evidence. And it seems "wrack and ruin"
> has a similar confusion. I've been painfully stretching my brains
> over this question. Help! [Scott Underwood]
>
> A. These expressions certainly cause confusion. Some style guides,
> such as Garner's Modern American Usage, argue that the correct forms
> are "rack one's brains" and "wrack and ruin". The current edition of
> Fowler says equally positively that, at least in British English,
> "rack" is correct in both cases. Etymologists know that the various
> forms of "rack" and "wrack" (and "wreak" and "wreck") have become
> inextricably confused down the centuries and have identified so many
> historical examples of "wrack one's brains" and "rack and ruin" that
> to insist on one over the other is etymologically insupportable. Dr
> Robert Burchfield, editor of the current Fowler, comments that "nine
> homonymous nouns and seven homonymous verbs" exist and despairingly
> adds "All the complexities of this exceedingly complicated word
> cannot be set down here; spare an hour (at least) to consult a large
> dictionary, especially the OED". I can tell you from experience that
> doing so can leave you even more confused.
>
> Let's start by finding you the evidence that you lack for "rack your
> brains", an idiom that has been known with "wit" and "memory"
> instead of "brains". The earliest example known is in this poem:
>
> Care for the world to do thy bodie right;
> Racke not thy wit to winne by wicked waies.
> [Care For Thy Soule, by William Byrd, in his Medius,
> published in 1583 and republished in Select poetry ... of
> the reign of Queen Elizabeth, by Edward Farr, 1845.]
>
> "Rack" as a verb derives from the Middle English noun for a frame on
> which materials were stretched for drying, so similar in sense and
> application to a tenter (see
> http://wwwords.org?TNTRH<http://wwwords.org/?TNTRH>).
> The modern
> sense of rack retains this spelling. A century before William Byrd
> was writing, the noun had shifted to mean the torture frame and more
> generally something that causes physical or mental suffering. The
> verb appeared about the same time, initially in senses that were
> associated with the stretching of cloth. By the middle of the next
> century it had extended to mean being racked with the pain of an
> illness, to twisting the meaning of words, and extorting money by
> outrageously increasing the amount demanded.
>
> These historical sources might lead us to argue for "rack one's
> brain". However, by the seventeenth century, "wrack" was already
> being used; indeed, my non-scientific investigations suggest that it
> was more common than "rack". Both are used today, with "wrack" more
> usual in the US and "rack" in Britain.
>
> In your other expression, often spelled "wrack and ruin", "wrack" is
> from a different source, Old English "wrecan", to drive. In early
> usage, it meant vengeance or revenge; by the fifteenth century, it
> had taken on the idea of damage, disaster, or severe injury caused
> by violence. It is linked to "wreak", as in "to wreak havoc", and
> "wreck", in the ship sense. ("Wrack" for seaweed is also a member of
> the set, as is the sense of high, fast-moving cloud, thought to be
> torn by the wind.)
>
> The earliest example of "wrack and ruin" in the OED is dated 1659,
> but confusion between the spellings "wrack" and "rack" had already
> begun, because the form "rack and ruin" is known from a document of
> 1599 quoted in Thomas Fowler's History of Corpus Christi College.
>
> If you're not totally confused by now, you surely should be. The
> best that I can do is to quote from another guide, which gives the
> standard US advice:
>
> 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.
> [Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage,
> 1994.]
>
> Julie Krueger
>
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