Reek vs Reck - What's the difference?
reek | reck |
A strong unpleasant smell.
Vapor; steam; smoke; fume.
* Shakespeare
(archaic) To be emitted or exhaled, emanate, as of vapour or perfume.
To have or give off a strong, unpleasant smell.
(figuratively) To be evidently associated with something unpleasant.
(Ireland) A hill; a mountain.
To make account of; to care for; to heed; to regard; consider.
* Sir Philip Sidney
* Burns
* 1603 , William Shakespeare, "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark", Act 1, Scene 3:
*
* 1922 , (James Joyce), Chapter 13
To care; to matter.
* 1822 , John E. Hall (ed.), The Port Folio , vol. XIV
* 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
* Milton
(obsolete) To think.
As nouns the difference between reek and reck
is that reek is a strong unpleasant smell or reek can be (ireland) a hill; a mountain while reck is back or reck can be .As a verb reek
is (archaic|intransitive) to be emitted or exhaled, emanate, as of vapour or perfume.reek
English
Etymology 1
From (etyl) rek, ‘smoke, fog’, Albanian regj ‘to tan’).Vladimir Orel, A Handbook of Germanic Etymology , s.vv. “*raukiz”, “*reukanan”(Leiden: Brill, 2003), 299:303.Noun
(-)- As hateful to me as the reek of a limekiln.
Etymology 2
From (etyl) reken ‘to smoke’, from (etyl) . See above.Verb
(en verb)- You reek of perfume.
- Your fridge reeks of egg.
- The boss appointing his nephew as a director reeks of nepotism.
Etymology 3
Probably a transferred use (after Irish cruach stack (of corn), pile, mountain, hill) of a variant of rick (with which it is cognate).Noun
(s)References
* * * * * Notes:Anagrams
* ----reck
English
Alternative forms
* (l) (obsolete)Verb
(en verb)- this son of mine not recking danger
- And may you better reck the rede / Than ever did the adviser.
- 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.
- Little recked he perhaps for what she felt, that dull aching void in her heart sometimes, piercing to the core.
- Little thou reck'st [2] of this sad store!
- Would thou might never reck [1] them more!
- It recks not!
- What recks it them?