English▸ noun
1 a framework, typically with rails, bars, hooks, or pegs, for holding or storing things:
a spice rack
a letter rack.
▪ a stack of digital effects units for a guitar or other instrument.
▪ a vertically barred frame for holding animal fodder:
a hay rack.
2 a cogged or toothed bar or rail engaging with a wheel or pinion, or using pegs to adjust the position of something:
a steering rack.
3 (the rack) historical an instrument of torture consisting of a frame on which the victim was stretched by turning rollers to which the wrists and ankles were tied.
6 North American English a set of antlers:
moose have the most impressive racks of all the antlered animals.
▸ verb [with object]
1 (also wrack) cause extreme pain, anguish, or distress to:
he was racked with guilt.
▪ historical torture (someone) on the rack.
2 [with object and adverbial of place] place in or on a rack:
the shoes were racked neatly beneath the dresses.
4 mainly archaic raise (rent) above a fair or normal amount. See also rack rent
▪ oppress (a tenant) by exacting excessive rent.
The relationship between the forms rack and wrack is complicated. The most common noun sense of rack, ‘a framework for holding and storing things’, is always spelled rack, never wrack. In the phrase rack something up the word is also always spelled rack. Figurative senses of the verb, deriving from the type of torture in which someone is stretched on a rack, can, however, be spelled either rack or wrack: thus ‘racked with guilt’ or ‘wracked with guilt’; ‘rack your brains’ or ‘wrack your brains’. In addition, the phrase rack and ruin can also be spelled wrack and ruin.
– ORIGIN Middle English: from Middle Dutch rec, Middle Low German rek ‘horizontal bar or shelf’, probably from recken ‘to stretch, reach’ (possibly the source of rack (sense 1 of the verb)1).