wrest
Pronunciation Verb

wrest (wrests, present participle wresting; past and past participle wrested)

  1. (transitive) To pull#Verb|pull or twist#Verb|twist violently.
  2. (transitive) To obtain by pulling or violent force#Noun|force.
    He wrested the remote control from my grasp and changed the channel.
    • 1671, John Milton, “Samson Agonistes, […]”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: Printed by J. M[acock] for John Starkey […], OCLC 228732398 ↗, page 42 ↗:
      [D]id not ſhe / Of Timna [{{w
  3. (transitive, figuratively) To seize.
    • 1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., OCLC 17392886 ↗; republished as “Man’s Reason”, in Tarzan of the Apes, New York, N.Y.: A. L. Burt Company, 1914, OCLC 1224185 ↗, page 145 ↗:
      There was one of the tribe of Tarzan who questioned his authority, and that was Terkoz, the son of Tublat, but he so feared the keen knife and the deadly arrows of his new lord that he confined the manifestation of his objections to petty disobediences and irritating mannerisms; Tarzan knew, however, that he but waited his opportunity to wrest the kingship from him by some sudden stroke of treachery, and so he was ever on his guard against surprise.
  4. (transitive, figuratively) To distort, to pervert#Verb|pervert, to twist.
    • c. 1596–1598, W[illiam] Shakespeare, The Excellent History of the Merchant of Venice. […] (First Quarto), [London]: Printed by J[ames] Roberts [for Thomas Heyes], published 1600, OCLC 24594216 ↗, [Act IV, scene i] ↗:
      And I beſeech you / Wreſt once the Law to your authority, / To do a great right, do a little wrong, / And curbe this cruell deuill of his will.
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981 ↗, Exodus 23:6 ↗:
      Thou ſhalt not wreſt the iudgement of thy poore in his cauſe.
  5. (transitive, music) To tune#Verb|tune with a wrest, or key#Noun|key.
Related terms Translations Noun

wrest (plural wrests)

  1. The act of wresting; a wrench#Noun|wrench or twist#Noun|twist; distortion.
  2. (music) A key#Noun|key to tune#Verb|tune a stringed instrument.
    • 1820, Walter Scott, chapter XIII, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. [...] In Three Volumes, volume III, Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], OCLC 230694662 ↗, page 323 ↗:
      The Minstrel […] wore round his neck a silver chain, by which hung the wrest, or key, with which he tuned his harp.
  3. (obsolete) Active or motive#Adjective|motive power#Noun|power.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Qveene. […], London: Printed [by John Wolfe] for VVilliam Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938 ↗, book II, canto XI, page 359 ↗:
      Adowne he keſt it with ſo puiſſant wreſt, / That backe againe it did alofte rebowned, / And gaue againſt his mother earth a gronefull ſownd.
  4. (obsolete, rare) Short for saw wrest (“a hand tool for set#Verb|setting the teeth of a saw#Noun|saw, determining the width of the kerf#Noun|kerf”); a saw set.
Noun

wrest (plural wrests)

  1. A partition#Noun|partition in a water wheel by which the form of the bucket#Noun|buckets is determined.
Noun

wrest (plural wrests)

  1. (agriculture, dated, dialectal) A metal (formerly wooden) piece of some plough#Noun|ploughs attached under the mouldboard (the curved#Adjective|curved blade that turns over the furrow#Noun|furrow) for clear#Verb|clearing out the furrow; the mouldboard itself.



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