Pry vs Wrest - What's the difference?
pry | wrest |
To look where one is not welcome; to be nosey.
To look closely and curiously at.
* Shakespeare
The act of prying
An excessively inquisitive person
A lever.
Leverage.
To use leverage to open or widen. (See also prise and prize.)
To pull or twist violently.
To obtain by pulling or violent force.
* Milton
(figuratively) To seize.
* Macaulay
* 1912 : (Edgar Rice Burroughs), (Tarzan of the Apes), Chapter 12
(figuratively) To twist, pervert, distort.
* Bible, Exodus xxiii. 6
* South
* 1597 , Shakespeare,
To tune with a wrest, or key.
The act of wresting; a wrench or twist; distortion.
(obsolete) Active or motive power.
(music) A key to tune a stringed instrument.
* Sir Walter Scott
A partition in a water wheel by which the form of the buckets is determined.
As an adverb pry
is allegedly.As a verb wrest is
to pull or twist violently.As a noun wrest is
the act of wresting; a wrench or twist; distortion.pry
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) pryen, . More at (l).Verb
(en-verb)- Watch thou and wake when others be asleep, / To pry into the secrets of the state.
Noun
Etymology 2
1800, ("lever"), construed as a plural noun or as a 3rd person singular verb.Noun
(pries)Verb
(en-verb)wrest
English
Verb
(en verb)- He wrested the remote control from my grasp and changed the channel.
- Did not she / Of Timna first betray me, and reveal / The secret wrested from me
- They instantly wrested the government out of the hands of Hastings.
- There was one of the tribe of Tarzan who questioned his authority, and that was Terkoz, the son of Tublat, but he so feared the keen knife and the deadly arrows of his new lord that he confined the manifestation of his objections to petty disobediences and irritating mannerisms; Tarzan knew, however, that he but waited his opportunity to wrest the kingship from him by some sudden stroke of treachery, and so he was ever on his guard against surprise.
- Thou shalt not wrest the judgment of thy poor.
- their arts of wresting , corrupting, and false interpreting the holy text
- And, I beseech you,
- Wrest once the law to your authority;
- To do a great right do a little wrong,
- And curb this cruel devil of his will.
Noun
(en noun)- (Hooker)
- (Spenser)
- The minstrel wore round his neck a silver chain, by which hung the wrest , or key, with which he tuned his harp.
