different between ruck vs rack

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English ruke, from Old Norse. Compare Icelandic hrúka, Swedish ruka.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??k/
• Rhymes: -?k

Noun

ruck (plural rucks)

1. A throng or crowd of people or things; a mass, a pack. [from 16th c.]
2. In Australian rules football
   1. A contest in games in which the ball is thrown or bounced in the air and two players from opposing teams attempt to give their team an advantage, typically by tapping the ball to a teammate.
   2. A player who competes in said contests; a ruckman or ruckwoman.
   3. (now rare) Either of a ruckman or a ruck rover, but not a rover.
   4. Any one of a ruckman, a ruck rover or a rover; a follower.
3. (rugby union) The situation formed when a player carrying the ball is brought to the ground and one or more members of each side are engaged above the ball, trying to win possession of it; a loose scrum. [from 20th c.]
4. The common mass of people or things; the ordinary ranks. [from 19th c.]

Usage notes

In the second Australian rules football sense, "ruck" is a gender-neutral term. "Ruckman" is sometimes considered to refer only to men, but is often considered gender-neutral. "Ruckwoman" only refers to women.

Translations

See also

• maul
• scrum

Verb

ruck (third-person singular simple present rucks, present participle rucking, simple past and past participle rucked)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To act as a ruck in a stoppage in Australian rules football.
2. (transitive, rugby union) To contest the possession of the ball in a ruck.

Translations

Derived terms

• outruck

Etymology 2

1780, from Old Norse hrukka (“wrinkle, crease”), from Proto-Germanic *hrunkij?, *hrunkit? (“fold, wrinkle”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- (“to turn, bend”). Akin to Icelandic hrukka (“wrinkle, crease, ruck”), Old High German runza (“fold, wrinkle, crease”), German Runzel (“wrinkle”), Middle Dutch ronse (“frown”). More at frounce. Possibly related to Irish roc.

Verb

ruck (third-person singular simple present rucks, present participle rucking, simple past and past participle rucked)

1. (transitive) To crease or fold.
2. (intransitive) To become folded.

See also

• ruche (“to pleat; to bunch up”)
• rutch (“to slide”)

Noun

ruck (plural rucks)

1. A crease, a wrinkle, a pucker, as on fabric.

Etymology 3

Compare Danish ruge (“to brood, to hatch”).

Verb

ruck (third-person singular simple present rucks, present participle rucking, simple past and past participle rucked)

1. (Britain, dialect, obsolete) To cower or huddle together; to squat; to sit, as a hen on eggs.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Gower to this entry?)

   (Can we find and add a quotation of South to this entry?)

Etymology 4

Noun

ruck (plural rucks)

1. Obsolete form of roc.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Drayton to this entry?)

Etymology 5

Clipping of rucksack.

Noun

ruck (plural rucks)

1. (slang, especially military) A rucksack; a large backpack.

Verb

ruck (third-person singular simple present rucks, present participle rucking, simple past and past participle rucked)

1. To carry a backpack while hiking or marching.

See also

• rucksack
• backpack
• backpacking

Etymology 6

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Noun

ruck (plural rucks)

1. A small heifer.

French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?œk/

Noun

ruck m (plural rucks)

1. (rugby) ruck

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?æk/
• 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

3. (historical) A device, incorporating a ratchet, used to torture victims by stretching them beyond their natural limits.
4. (nautical) A piece or frame of wood, having several sheaves, through which the running rigging passes.

   Synonym: rack block

5. (nautical, slang) A bunk.
6. (nautical, by extension, slang, uncountable) Sleep.
7. A distaff.
8. (mechanical engineering) 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.
9. (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.
10. A cranequin, a mechanism including a rack, pinion and pawl, providing both mechanical advantage and a ratchet, used to bend and cock a crossbow.
11. A set of antlers (as on deer, moose or elk).
12. A cut of meat involving several adjacent ribs.

13. (billiards, snooker) A hollow triangle used for aligning the balls at the start of a game.
14. (slang, vulgar) A woman's breasts.

    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:breasts

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

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

17. A grate on which bacon is laid.
18. (obsolete) That which is extorted; exaction.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir E. Sandys to this entry?)

19. (algebra) A set with a distributive binary operation whose result is unique.
20. (Britain, slang) A thousand pounds (£1,000), especially if proceeds of crime

Derived terms

Translations

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, John Foxe, Actes and Monuments

     He was racked and miserably tormented.

   • 2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin 2012, p. 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.
4. (figuratively) To stretch or strain; to harass, or oppress by extortion.
   • The landlords there most shamefully rack their tenants.

   • 1645, Thomas Fuller, Good Thoughts in Bad Times

     Grant that I may never rack a Scripture simile 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 (a person) in the testicles.
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.
11. (structural engineering) Tending to shear a structure (that is, force it to move in different directions at different points).

    Synonym: shear

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, ghastly, ghoul.

Derived terms

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

Translations

Etymology 2

From Old English re??an (“to stretch out, extend”).

Verb

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

1. To stretch a person's joints.

Derived terms

• rack one's brain

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.
   • 1851, Charles Kingsley, Three Fishers

     And the night rack came rolling up.

   • 1607, William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV, scene 14

     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.

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.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Fuller to this entry?)

Noun

rack (plural racks)

1. A fast amble.

Etymology 6

See wreck.

Noun

rack (plural racks)

1. (obsolete) A wreck; destruction.

   • All goes to rack.

Derived terms

• rack and ruin

Etymology 7

Noun

rack (plural racks)

1. (obsolete) A young rabbit, or its skin.

Etymology 8

Noun

rack

1. Alternative form of arak

References

Further reading

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

Anagrams

• cark

Spanish

Noun

rack m (plural racks)

1. rack