wreck

Formswrecks, wrecking, wrecked

Pluralwrecks

1. 1
   verbtransitive

   To destroy something violently, or damage it so badly that it no longer works or is useless.

   A drunk driver wrecked three parked cars on Main Street last night.

   Floodwater can wreck a furnace beyond repair in a single night.

   Similardestroy, smash, total, demolish, ruin

   Oppositerepair

   Note

   Ships were among its first objects, as when The Tempest has the king's ship believed "wrecked", and today cars have taken their place: to wreck a car is to crash it badly. Wreck is stronger than damage, since what is wrecked no longer works or is not worth repairing.

2. 2
   terrible statenouncountable

   Someone or something that has been ruined and left in a terrible state.

   By the time the verdict came in, she was a nervous wreck.

   After three moves in one year, our sofa was a wreck.

   Similarmess, ruin

   Note

   The word came from Old Norse by way of Anglo-Norman, and it shares a Germanic root with wreak, which came down through Old English instead. Said of a person, it usually takes an adjective naming the damage: a nervous wreck, an emotional wreck, a physical wreck.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   An accident or event in which something is damaged by a collision.

   Traffic backed up for miles after a five-car wreck near the bridge.

   The engineer survived the wreck by jumping from the cab just before the trains collided.

   Similarcrash, collision, accident, pileup, smash

   Note

   Ships suffered it long before cars did: in Edmund Spenser's Amoretti (1595) a vessel driven onto a rock "doth suffer wreck", with no article, the way one suffers harm. Now it counts and serves road and rail: a five-car wreck, a train wreck. Because one word also names the wreckage left behind, context sorts them out: the wreck that backs up traffic is the event, the one towed away is what remains.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   The ruined remains of something after severe damage or heavy wear.

   Investigators sifted through the wreck of the plane for the flight recorder.

   Divers mapped the wreck of a fishing boat that sank in the bay decades ago.

   Similarremains, debris, hulk

   Note

   The construction the wreck of lets the remains belong to anything at all, a plane, a fortune, even a former self. The fatigued speaker of William Cowper's poem "Retirement" (1782) comes home as "the wreck of what I was", worn down rather than smashed, which shows how far the word can stretch from broken timber.

5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To ruin something, or bring it into a state of decay and disrepair.

   Decades of neglect had wrecked the once-grand hotel.

   Careless tenants can wreck an apartment within a year.

   Similarruin, destroy, devastate, trash

   Oppositerestore

6. 6
   ship accidentnouncountable

   An event in which a ship is badly damaged or destroyed; a shipwreck.

   Only two of the crew survived the wreck off Cape Hatteras.

   After a string of wrecks on the reef, the government finally built a lighthouse.

7. 7
   crashverbintransitive

   To crash or otherwise come to grief, ending up damaged or ruined.

   The freight train wrecked on a sharp curve, spilling coal across the tracks.

   Stock cars often wreck on the last lap, when drivers take the biggest risks.

   Similarcrash

8. 8
   verbtransitive

   To involve someone or something in a wreck, and so bring ruin or disaster on them and defeat their hopes of success.

   Infighting can wreck a campaign long before election day.

   A string of scandals wrecked the senator's career within a single year.

   Similarruin, destroy, derail, sink

   Note

   Here the ruin falls on hopes, plans and careers rather than on objects: infighting wrecks a campaign, scandal wrecks a career. The verb works reflexively too, and Samuel Daniel wrote in 1595 that the weak, if they conspire, "wreck themselves"; people still wreck their own chances.

9. 9
   washed-up goodsnoununcountable

   Goods and other property washed ashore by the sea after a shipwreck.

   Anyone who takes wreck from the shore must report it to the authorities.

   When the freighter broke apart, crates, rope and life jackets came ashore as wreck for weeks.

   Similarflotsam

   Note

   In law the word reaches beyond what lands on the beach: Canada's Criminal Code counts a vessel's cargo, stores and tackle, any parts separated from it, and the belongings of the people aboard. It is a mass noun here, so the law speaks of wreck, not wrecks, and of taking or reporting wreck found on the shore.

10. 10
    strip for partsverbAustraliatransitive

    To take apart wrecked vehicles or other objects in order to recover any useful parts.

    The yard out past the tip will wreck any car you bring in and sell off the parts.

    We wrecked the old Commodore for its gearbox and wheels.

    Similarstrip, dismantle, cannibalize, scrap

    Note

    The dismantling sense is Australian. To an American or British reader, wrecking a car means crashing it, so this meaning leans on context: a wrecking yard, spare parts, or a vehicle already written off before anyone picks up a wrench.

11. 11
    fallen birdsnouncountable

    A large number of birds brought down to the ground, injured or dead, by extremely severe weather.

    Strong onshore gales caused a wreck of little auks along the east coast.

    Ornithologists recorded the worst wreck in decades, with exhausted petrels found far inland.

    Note

    Ornithologists borrowed the shipwreck image for a mass stranding: prolonged gales drive seabirds ashore or far inland, where they come down exhausted, injured or dead. Such events can be huge, and one wreck in 1952 involved more than 7,000 birds in Britain and Ireland.

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