• enPR: rēk, IPA: /ɹiːk/
• (America) IPA: /ɹik/

wreak (wreaks, present participle wreaking; past and past participle wreaked)

1. (transitive) To cause something harmful; to afflict; to inflict; to harm or injury; to let out something harmful; .

   The earthquake wreaked havoc in the city.

   She wreaked her anger on his car.

2. (transitive) To chasten, or chastise/chastize, or castigate, or punish, or smite.

   The police abused of their authority to wreak an innocent.

   The criminal has been wreaked by the Judge to spend a year in prison.

   • 1841, Thomas Macaulay, Warren Hastings

     Now was the time to be avenged on his old enemy, to wreak a grudge of seventeen years.

3. (archaic) To inflict or take vengeance on.
   • 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

     their woe / Broods maddening inwardly and scorns to wreak / Itself abroad;

   • 1874, Alfred Tennyson, “Gareth and Lynette”, in Idylls of the King (The Works of Alfred Tennyson; V), cabinet edition, London: Henry S. King & Co., […], OCLC 1066791046 ↗, page 51 ↗:

     So tho' I scarce can ask it thee for hate, / Grant me some knight to do the battle for me, / Kill the foul thief, and wreak me for my son.

   • 1912 February–July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Under the Moons of Mars”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., OCLC 17392886 ↗; republished as “Love-making on Mars”, in A Princess of Mars, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., 1917, OCLC 419578288 ↗, page 135 ↗:

     At heart they hate their horrid fates, and so wreak their poor spite on me who stand for everything they have not, and for all they most crave and never can attain.

4. (archaic) To take vengeance for.

   • Come wreak his loss, whom bootless ye complain.

5. (intransitive) Misspelling of reek

• German: verursachen, auslassen, anrichten
• Russian: наноси́ть
• Spanish: provocar, inflingir, volcar

• German: rächen
• Russian: мстить
• Spanish: vengarse de

wreak (plural wreaks)

1. (archaic, literary) Revenge; vengeance; furious passion; resentment.
   • 1901, John Payne (translator), The History of King Omar Ben Ennuman and His Sons Sherkan and Zoulmekan, in The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Volume 2:

     Would that before my death I might but see my son The empery in my stead over the people hold

     And rush upon his foes and take on them his wreak, At push of sword and pike, in fury uncontrolled.

   • 1903, George Chapman, Richard Herne Shepherd, Algernon Charles Swinburne, The Works of George Chapman:

     However, no thought touch'd Minerva's mind, That any one should escape his wreak design'd.

   • 2003, John Foxe, John Cumming, Book of Martyrs and the Acts and Monuments of the Church:

     For three causes Duke William entered this land to subdue Harold. One was, for that it was to him given by King Edward his nephew. The second was, to take wreak for the cruel murder of his nephew Alfred, King Edward's brother, and of the Normans, which deed he ascribed chiefly to Harold.

2. (archaic, literary) Punishment; retribution; payback.
   • 1885, Sir Richard Burton (translator), The Tale of the Three Apples, in The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1:

     Of a surety none murdered the damsel but I; take her wreak on me this moment; for, an thou do not thus, I will require it of thee before Almighty Allah.