rack

English

A rack for weights in a gym

A dish rack holding some plates

A torture rack (sense 3)

A rack (sense 13) of pool balls

A rack (sense 12) of lamb in a butcher's shop

A climber's rack (sense 17)

A woman with a big rack (sense 15)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɹæk/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æk
• Homophone: wrack

Etymology 1

From Middle English rakke, rekke, from Middle Dutch rac, recke, rec (Dutch rek), see rekken.

Noun

rack (plural racks)

1. A series of one or more shelves, stacked one above the other
2. Any of various kinds of frame for holding luggage or other objects on a vehicle or vessel.

   Synonym: luggage rack

4. (historical) A device, incorporating a ratchet, used to torture victims by stretching them beyond their natural limits.
   • c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack, / Where men enforced do speak anything.

   • 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 1, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volumes (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC:

     During the troubles of the fifteenth century, a rack was introduced into the Tower, and was occasionally used under the plea of political necessity.

5. (nautical) A piece or frame of wood, having several sheaves, through which the running rigging passes.

   Synonym: rack block

6. (nautical, slang) A bunk.
   • 2008, Byron L. Smith, Prescription Music, →ISBN, page 33:

     Chief Stevens approached my rack and repeatedly ordered me to vacate my rack and report to the working party.

   • 2010, Herb Brewer, Chronicles of a Marine Rifleman: Vietnam, 1965-1966, →ISBN, page 171:

     By the time I had unpacked my sea bag, made my rack, and finished a good long hot shower, it was late in the evening.

   • 2016, Cpl. Osborn R. E, Like Killing Rats, →ISBN:

     I took off my helmet, sat it gently down at the head of my rack on the wooden deck, plopped my butt down on my rack again, and began taking off my stateside assbusting boots.

7. (nautical, by extension, slang, uncountable) Sleep.
   • 2009 December 18, 1:00:07 from the start, in Avatar, spoken by Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), 20th Century Fox:

     Do I have to do this now? Like, I really need to get some rack.

8. A distaff.
9. (mechanical engineering, rail transport) A bar with teeth on its face or edge, to work with those of a gearwheel, pinion, or worm, which is to drive or be driven by it.
   • 1950 November, H. P. White, “The Furka-Oberalp Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 767:

     Just beyond that station the first step is encountered and the rack resorted to, taking the line on a gradient of 1 in 9 over a steeply inclined bridge and through a spiral tunnel.

   • 1960 December, 'Voyageur', “The Mountain Railways of the Bernese Oberland”, in Trains Illustrated, page 750:

     The ladder-type Riggenbach rack is the one in use on both systems.

10. (mechanical engineering) A bar with teeth on its face or edge, to work with a pawl as a ratchet allowing movement in one direction only, used for example in a handbrake or crossbow.
11. A cranequin, a mechanism including a rack, pinion and pawl, providing both mechanical advantage and a ratchet, used to bend and cock a crossbow.
12. A set of antlers (as on deer, moose or elk).
14. A cut of meat involving several adjacent ribs.

    I bought a rack of lamb at the butcher's yesterday.

16. (billiards, snooker) A hollow triangle used for aligning the balls at the start of a game.
17. (gambling) A plastic tray used for holding and moving chips.
19. (slang, vulgar) A woman's breasts.

    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:breasts

20. (climbing, caving) A friction device for abseiling, consisting of a frame with five or more metal bars, around which the rope is threaded.

    rappel rack

    abseil rack

22. (climbing, slang) A climber's set of equipment for setting up protection and belays, consisting of runners, slings, carabiners, nuts, Friends, etc.

    I used almost a full rack on the second pitch.

23. A grate on which bacon is laid.
24. (algebra) A set with a distributive binary operation whose result is unique.
25. (slang) A thousand, especially if proceeds of a crime.

Derived terms

Translations

Etymology 2

From Old English reċċan (“to stretch out, extend”).

Verb

rack (third-person singular simple present racks, present participle racking, simple past and past participle racked)

1. To place in or hang on a rack.
2. To torture (someone) on the rack.
   • 1563 March 30 (Gregorian calendar), John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perillous Dayes, , London: Iohn Day, , →OCLC:

     He was racked and miserably tormented.

   • 2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin, published 2012, page 228:

     As the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt later recalled, his father, Henry VII's jewel-house keeper Henry Wyatt, had been racked on the orders of Richard III, who had sat there and watched.

3. To cause (someone) to suffer pain.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. , London: [Samuel Simmons], , →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: , London: Basil Montagu Pickering , 1873, →OCLC:

     Vaunting aloud but racked with deep despair.

4. (figurative) To stretch or strain; to harass, or oppress by extortion.
   • c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     Try what my credit can in Venice do; / That shall be racked even to the uttermost.

   • 1596 (date written; published 1633), Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande , Dublin: Societie of Stationers, , →OCLC; republished as A View of the State of Ireland  (Ancient Irish Histories), Dublin: Society of Stationers, Hibernia Press, y John Morrison, 1809, →OCLC:

     The landlords there most shamefully rack their tenants.

   • 1645, Thomas Fuller, “Scripture Observations”, in Good Thoughts in Bad Times, , Exeter, Devon: Thomas Hunt, →OCLC, section I, page 69:

     Grant that I may never rack a Scripture Similie, beyond the true intent thereof.

5. (billiards, snooker, pool) To put the balls into the triangular rack and set them in place on the table.

   Synonym: rack up

6. (slang, transitive) To strike in the testicles.
   • 1999 November 2, Squad Leader, “CUPS Required for Gym Class?”, in alt.support.jock-strap‎ (Usenet):

     Bike7125 raises a great point suggesting that cups could have been recommended "optional" equipment in school PE. I never got racked by a baseball or softball, but we did have a gym teacher, who insisted on a weekly session of a "cruelty sport" called bombardment. The idea was to throw basketballs at a line of guys, and try to hit them. (Guess where most gym bullys aimed!)

7. (firearms) To (manually) load (a round of ammunition) from the magazine or belt into firing position in an automatic or semiautomatic firearm.
8. (firearms) To move the slide bar on a shotgun in order to chamber the next round.
9. (mining) To wash (metals, ore, etc.) on a rack.
10. (nautical) To bind together, as two ropes, with cross turns of yarn, marline, etc.
12. (structural engineering) To tend to shear a structure (that is, force it to bend, lean, or move in different directions at different points).

    Synonym: shear

    Post-and-lintel construction racks easily.

    • 1977, Roger L. Tuomi, David S. Gromala, “Racking Strength of Walls”, in USDA Forest Service Research Paper‎, number FPL 301:

      The racking strength of a wall system is defined in terms of its ability to resist horizon­tal inplane shear forces. The shear, or racking, forces which act on wail systems arise primarily from wind.

Usage notes

In senses “torture” and “suffer pain”, frequently confused with wrack (“destroy”) (more rarely, wrack (“wreckage”)), both as stand-alone verb and in compounds. In most uses, rack is correct, and wrack is incorrect. Etymologically, nerve-racking (“stressful”), pain-racked, and rack one's brain, rack one's brains (“think hard”) are correct, while rack and ruin and storm-racked are incorrect variants of wrack and ruin (“complete destruction”) and storm-wracked (“wrecked by a storm”).

Usage guidance differs: either prefer the etymologically correct term, prefer rack to (archaic) wrack, or use either. The etymologically correct forms are preferred by some style guides, but the unetymological forms are well-established and in wide use, and other style guides simply consider them variant spellings. Other style guides categorically ban wrack as archaic, suggesting modern synonyms like wreck, ruin, or destroy. In some cases style guides are confused by the etymology, or feature unhistorical forms such as nerve-wracking.

This confusion dates to Early Modern English in the 16th century (as in rack and ruin), and is presumably due to the influence of ⟨wr⟩ in words such as wreak, wreck, wrench, etc., which connote discomfort and torment. Formally termed the graphaesthesia of the graphaestheme ⟨wr⟩, since identical sound /r/ to ⟨r⟩; compare with phonaesthesia. Compare rapt/wrapt, and also ⟨gh⟩ as in ghost and ghastly.

Conjugation

Derived terms

• nerve-racking
• pain-racked
• rack off
• rack one's brain, rack one's brains

Translations

Etymology 3

From Middle English reken, from Old Norse reka (“to be drifted, tost”)

The noun is from Middle English rak, rakke, from Middle English rek (“drift; thing tossed ashore; jetsam”), from the verb.

Verb

rack (third-person singular simple present racks, present participle racking, simple past and past participle racked)

1. To drive; move; go forward rapidly; stir.
2. To fly, as vapour or broken clouds.

Translations

Noun

rack (uncountable)

1. Thin, flying, broken clouds, or any portion of floating vapour in the sky.
   • 1669, Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum or A Natural History in ten Centuries, page 32:

     The winds in the upper region, which move the clouds above, which we call the rack, […] pass without noise.

   • 1851, Charles Kingsley, Three Fishers:

     And the night rack came rolling up.

   • c. 1606–1607, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Anthonie and Cleopatra”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :

     Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish ... That which is now a horse ... The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct

Etymology 4

From Middle English rakken.

Verb

rack (third-person singular simple present racks, present participle racking, simple past and past participle racked)

1. (brewing) To clarify, and thereby deter further fermentation of, beer, wine or cider by draining or siphoning it from the dregs.
   • 1631, Francis [Bacon], “(please specify |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. , 3rd edition, London: William Rawley; rinted by J H for William Lee , →OCLC:

     It is in common practice to draw wine or beer from the lees (which we call racking), whereby it will clarify much the sooner.

   • 1987, Keith Dunstan, The Amber Nectar, Ringwood: Vicking O'Neil, page 108:

     The Darwin administrator, J.C. Archer, with great ceremony, turned on the flow to rack the precious golden stuff into casks.

Translations

Etymology 5

See rack (“that which stretches”), or rock (verb).

Verb

rack (third-person singular simple present racks, present participle racking, simple past and past participle racked)

1. (of a horse) To amble fast, causing a rocking or swaying motion of the body; to pace.
   • 1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; , London: Iohn Williams , →OCLC:

     The other two (only racking, no thorough-paced protestants) watched their opportunity to run away

Noun

rack (plural racks)

1. A fast amble.

Etymology 6

See wreck.

Noun

rack (plural racks)

1. (obsolete) A wreck; destruction.
   • 1665 September 19 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “September 9th, 1665”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys , volume V, London: George Bell & Sons ; Cambridge: Deighton Bell & Co., published 1895, →OCLC:

     All goes to rack.

Derived terms

• rack and ruin

Etymology 7

Uncertain. Perhaps a contraction of rabbock, an alteration ( +‎ -ock) of rabbit.

Noun

rack (plural racks)

1. (obsolete) A young rabbit, or its skin.
   • 1869 February 13, “Rabbit Skin”, in All the Year Round, page 247:

     Now, sir, you would say a skin is a skin, we say it is a ' whole,' or a 'half,' or a 'quarter,' or a 'rack,' or a 'sucker. Suckers are skins of infant rabbits, and of little value. Eight racks are equal to one whole.

   • 1879, Ure's Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines, page 380:

     The skin of a sucker is white, of a quarter, black and white striped, of a rack all black, and of a best all white.

   • 1882, Bees, rabbits, and pigeons; how to breed and how to rear them:

     Those would be of different shades of colour according to the time of year at which they were produced, those bred about May-day undergoing no change from their white colour, but from a white rack become a whole skin; […]

   • 1892, Henry Poland, Fur-bearing Animals in Nature and in Commerce, page 289:

     Rabbit skins are sorted into wholes, halves, quarters, racks, and suckers, or very small skins.

Etymology 8

Noun

rack (uncountable)

1. Alternative form of arak
   • 1907, George Manville Fenn, Trapped by Malays: A Tale of Bayonet and Kris, page 347:

     If it was my officers wanted a stone jar of rack or a dozen of bottled ale, I might manage 'em, but I'm nowhere with sacks.

Derived terms

References

Further reading

• rack on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• rack (billiards) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• Cark, cark

Romanian

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English rack.

Noun

rack n (plural rackuri)

1. rack

Declension

Spanish

Noun

rack m (plural racks)

1. rack

Swedish

Swedish Wikipedia has an article on:

rack

Wikipedia ^sv

Noun

rack n

1. a rack (for holding electronic equipment)

   serverrack

   server rack

   stereorack

   stereo rack

2. Synonym of racket (considered erroneous by some – see the usage notes for that entry)

Declension

See also

• hylla
• rackig
• ställning

See also (racket)

• brax
• dalmatin

References

• rack in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• rack in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• rack in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)