• IPA: /ɹæk/

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 clothes, bottles, animal fodder, mined ore, shot on a vessel, etc.
3. (cycling) A frame on the back or front of a bike that enables fastening of luggage.
4. (nautical) A piece or frame of wood, having several sheaves, through which the running rigging passes.
5. (nautical, slang) A bunk.
6. (nautical, 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#Etymology 2|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 device, incorporating a ratchet, used to torture victims by stretching them beyond their natural limits.
    • 1596-97, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III Scene 2

      Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack,

      Where men enforced do speak anything.

    • 18, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter 1, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify ), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, OCLC 1069526323 ↗:

11. A cranequin, a mechanism including a rack, pinion and pawl, providing both mechanical advantage and a ratchet, used to bend and cock#Verb|cock a crossbow.
12. A set of antlers (as on deer, moose or elk).
13. A cut of meat involving several adjacent ribs.

    I bought a rack of lamb at the butcher's yesterday.

14. (billiards, snooker) A hollow triangle used for aligning the balls at the start of a game.
15. (slang, vulgar) A woman's breasts.
16. (climbing, caving) A friction device for abseiling, consisting of a frame with five or more metal bars, around which the rope is threaded.

    rappel rack

    abseil rack

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

    I used almost a full rack on the second pitch.

18. A grate on which bacon is laid.
19. (obsolete) That which is extorted; exaction.
20. (algebra) A set with a distributive binary operation whose result is unique.
21. (slang) A thousand pounds (£1,000), especially such proceeds of crime

• (nautical: piece of wood) rack block
• (breasts) See also Thesaurus:breasts

• French: étagère
• German: Regal
• Italian: rastrelliera
• Portuguese: estante, armário, compartimentos
• Russian: этаже́рка
• Spanish: estante, repisa

• French: chevalet
• German: Streckbank
• Italian: eculeo
• Portuguese: cavalete
• Russian: ды́ба
• Spanish: potro

• Russian: ве́шалка
• Spanish: perchero

• French: carré

• French: balcon, devanture
• German: Holz vor der Hütte (literally "wood[pile] in front of the hut")
• Portuguese: prateleira
• Russian: буфера́

rack (racks, present participle racking; past and past participle racked)

1. To place in or hang on a rack.
2. To torture (someone) on the rack.

   • 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.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book 1”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:

     Vaunting aloud but racked with deep despair.

4. (figurative) To stretch or strain; to harass, or oppress by extortion.
   • c. 1596–1598, William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act I, scene i]:

     Try what my credit can in Venice do; / That shall be racked even to the uttermost.

   • The landlords there shamefully rack their tenants.

   • They 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.

   Synonyms: rack up

6. (slang) To strike a male in the testicles.
7. To (manually) load (a round of ammunition) from the magazine or belt into firing position in an automatic or semiautomatic firearm.
8. (mining) To wash (metals, ore, etc.) on a rack.
9. (nautical) To bind together, as two ropes, with cross turns of yarn, marline, etc.
10. To move the slide bar on a shotgun in order to chamber the next round

    If you're going to have to use it defensively, have the shotgun already loaded and ready for use. The last thing you want to have to do is rack the slide, which could give away your position, in which case it may very well be the last thing you ever do.

11. (structural engineering) Tending to shear a structure (that is, force it to move in different directions at different points).

    The racking strength of a wall system is defined in terms of its ability to resist horizon­tal inplane shear forces. The shear, or racking, forces which act on wail systems arise primarily from wind.

    Post-and-lintel construction racks easily; diagonal bracing strengthens it considerably, preventing the rectangles of the frame from becoming parallelograms.

rack (racks, present participle racking; past and past participle racked)

1. To stretch a person's joints.

• Portuguese: alongar, estirar

rack (racks, present participle racking; past and past participle racked)

1. To drive; move; go forward rapidly; stir
2. To fly, as vapour or broken clouds

rack (uncountable)

1. Thin, flying, broken clouds, or any portion of floating vapour in the sky.

   • 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

rack (racks, present participle racking; 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.
   • 1626, Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, Or, A Naturall Historie: In Ten Centuries

     It is in common practice to draw wine or beer from the lees (which we call racking), whereby it will clarify much the sooner.

rack (racks, present participle racking; past and past participle racked)

1. (of a horse) To amble fast, causing a rocking or swaying motion of the body; to pace.

rack (plural racks)

1. A fast amble.

rack (plural racks)

1. (obsolete) A wreck; destruction.

   • All goes to rack.

rack (plural racks)

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

rack

1. Alternative form of arak#English|arak

rack (uncountable)

1. (BDSM) Initialism of Risk-aware consensual kink