This week’s theme
Adjectives

This week’s words
acerbic
polemical
orectic
wrackful

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(RAK-ful)

MEANING:

adjective: Ruinous.

ETYMOLOGY:

Perhaps from Middle Dutch wrak (wreck), influenced by Old English wraec (misery). Earliest documented use: 1558.

NOTES:

In Sonnet 65, Shakespeare laments time’s “the wrackful siege of battering days.” You can almost hear the timbers groan and the sigh of loss. Wrackful names the beauty in ruin: whether it’s a ship dashed against rocks or a heart undone by years.

USAGE:

“No longer surrounded by a wooden shell in a wrackful sea, but by an aluminum box.”
Brian McNaughton; Even More Nasty Stories; Wildside Press; 2000.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: