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Wreck vs Reck - What's the difference?

wreck | reck |

As verbs the difference between wreck and reck

is that wreck is to destroy violently; to cause severe damage to something, to a point where it no longer works, or is useless while reck is to make account of; to care for; to heed; to regard; consider.

As a noun wreck

is something or someone that has been ruined.

wreck

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • Something or someone that has been ruined.
    • He was an emotional wreck after the death of his wife.
  • The remains of something that has been severely damaged or worn down.
  • * Cowper
    • To the fair haven of my native home, / The wreck of what I was, fatigued I come.
  • An event in which something is damaged through collision.
  • * Addison
    • the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds
  • * Spenser
    • Hard and obstinate / As is a rock amidst the raging floods, / 'Gainst which a ship, of succour desolate, / Doth suffer wreck , both of herself and goods.
  • * J. R. Green
    • Its intellectual life was thus able to go on amidst the wreck of its political life.
  • (legal) Goods, etc. cast ashore by the sea after a shipwreck.
    • (Bouvier)

    Synonyms

    * crash * ruins

    Derived terms

    * shipwreck

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To destroy violently; to cause severe damage to something, to a point where it no longer works, or is useless.
    • He wrecked the car in a collision.
    That adulterous hussy wrecked my marriage!
  • * Shakespeare
    • Supposing that they saw the king's ship wrecked .
  • To ruin or dilapidate.
  • (Australia) To dismantle wrecked vehicles or other objects, to reclaim any useful parts.
  • To involve in a wreck; hence, to cause to suffer ruin; to balk of success, and bring disaster on.
  • * Daniel
    • Weak and envied, if they should conspire, / They wreck themselves.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Antonyms

    * build * construct * make * produce

    Derived terms

    * bewreck * wrecker * wreckage

    References

    reck

    English

    Alternative forms

    * (l) (obsolete)

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To make account of; to care for; to heed; to regard; consider.
  • * Sir Philip Sidney
    • this son of mine not recking danger
  • * Burns
    • And may you better reck the rede / Than ever did the adviser.
  • * 1603 , William Shakespeare, "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark", Act 1, Scene 3:
    • Ophelia:
    Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
    Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
    Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
    Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
    And recks not his own rede.
  • *
  • * 1922 , (James Joyce), Chapter 13
    • Little recked he perhaps for what she felt, that dull aching void in her heart sometimes, piercing to the core.
  • To care; to matter.
  • * 1822 , John E. Hall (ed.), The Port Folio , vol. XIV
    • Little thou reck'st [2] of this sad store!
    Would thou might never reck [1] them more!
  • * 1900 , , Villanelle of Marguerite's , lines 10-11
  • *:She knows us not, nor recks if she enthrall
  • *:With voice and eyes and fashion of her hair
  • To concern, to be important
    • It recks not!
  • * Milton
    • What recks it them?
  • (obsolete) To think.

    • Derived terms

    * (l) * reckless