What's the difference between crack and wrack?

Crack


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To break or burst, with or without entire separation of the parts; as, to crack glass; to crack nuts.
  • (v. t.) To rend with grief or pain; to affect deeply with sorrow; hence, to disorder; to distract; to craze.
  • (v. t.) To cause to sound suddenly and sharply; to snap; as, to crack a whip.
  • (v. t.) To utter smartly and sententiously; as, to crack a joke.
  • (v. t.) To cry up; to extol; -- followed by up.
  • (v. i.) To burst or open in chinks; to break, with or without quite separating into parts.
  • (v. i.) To be ruined or impaired; to fail.
  • (v. i.) To utter a loud or sharp, sudden sound.
  • (v. i.) To utter vain, pompous words; to brag; to boast; -- with of.
  • (n.) A partial separation of parts, with or without a perceptible opening; a chink or fissure; a narrow breach; a crevice; as, a crack in timber, or in a wall, or in glass.
  • (n.) Rupture; flaw; breach, in a moral sense.
  • (n.) A sharp, sudden sound or report; the sound of anything suddenly burst or broken; as, the crack of a falling house; the crack of thunder; the crack of a whip.
  • (n.) The tone of voice when changed at puberty.
  • (n.) Mental flaw; a touch of craziness; partial insanity; as, he has a crack.
  • (n.) A crazy or crack-brained person.
  • (n.) A boast; boasting.
  • (n.) Breach of chastity.
  • (n.) A boy, generally a pert, lively boy.
  • (n.) A brief time; an instant; as, to be with one in a crack.
  • (n.) Free conversation; friendly chat.
  • (a.) Of superior excellence; having qualities to be boasted of.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) They’re no crack force either; many are rather portly!
  • (2) While superheroes like “superman” (21st in SplashData’s 2014 rankings) and “batman” (24th) may be popular choices for passwords, the results if they are cracked could be anything other than super – and users will only have themselves to blame.
  • (3) However, we have observed cracks on the Dacron fibers, fiber fracture, fiber protrusion, and poor attachment to the diaphragm, which can cause potentially disastrous complications.
  • (4) But instead, he is going to crack under public anger over the huge amounts senior bankers have been paying themselves.
  • (5) It is found that, in contrast to most metallic materials yet in keeping with many ceramics, there are no distinct fracture morphologies in pyro-carbons which are characteristic of a specific mode of loading; fracture surfaces appear to be identical for both catastrophic and subcritical crack growth under either sustained or cyclic loading.
  • (6) Iowa senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican who chairs the Senate judiciary committee, introduced legislation on Tuesday that would crack down on jurisdictions that provide safe harbor for undocumented migrants by withholding some federal funding for state and local entities if they decline to cooperate with the government on the holding or transferring of undocumented migrants with criminal records.
  • (7) In a single letter in February 2005, Charles urged a badger cull to prevent the spread of bovine tuberculosis – damning opponents to the cull as “intellectually dishonest”; lobbied for his preferred person to be appointed to crack down on the mistreatment of farmers by supermarkets; proposed his own aide to brief Downing Street on the design of new hospitals; and urged Blair to tackle an EU directive limiting the use of herbal alternative medicines in the UK.
  • (8) On second impacts, the GSI rose considerably because the shell and liner of the DH-151 cracked and the suspension of the "141" stretched during the first blow.
  • (9) 9.18pm: The Ohio Democrat Dennis Kucinich has a crack, and he's taking no prisoners: "We've heard Mr Toyoda say that Toyota grew to fast.
  • (10) Here come the Dodgers for another crack at it in the second.
  • (11) That led to the second breakthrough, as the once formidable laws of omerta - silence punishable by death - cracked.
  • (12) The passengers were then flown to an Australian icebreaker, the Aurora Australis, which had cracked through ice floes and was now sailing towards Australia's Casey research base.
  • (13) SEM of the resulting surface showed rounded fragments of enamel rods, enamel melting, cracks, and smooth-edged voids.
  • (14) According to the NYPD commissioner, Bill Bratton, whose voice almost cracked with emotion as he addressed the media on Saturday evening , the “digital warning poster” featuring a picture of Brinsley and his whereabouts arrived at the data centre at 2.47pm.
  • (15) As subcritical crack velocities under cyclic loading were found to be many orders of magnitude faster than those measured under equivalent monotonic loads and to occur at typically 45% lower stress-intensity levels, cyclic fatigue in pyrolytic carbon-coated graphite is reasoned to be a vital consideration in the design and life-prediction procedures of prosthetic devices manufactured from this material.
  • (16) It is hence impossible to wiretap, intercept or crack the information transmitted through it,” Xinhua reported after Tuesday’s launch.
  • (17) He just never dreamed it would be life without parole.” Obama reduces sentences of 46 inmates convicted of nonviolent drug crimes Read more As his sister put it, Bennett “got caught up” in a five-man drug ring run by an old friend, John Hansley, to pay for his addiction to crack.
  • (18) Spencer has now heard that Andy, who got the boat remember, has been cracking on to Louise, even though Jamie warned him it would be like jumping into a polar bear's nest.
  • (19) "I urge both the monks and the lay Tibetans of the area not to do anything that might be used as a pretext by the local authorities to massively crack down on them.
  • (20) Of 26 patients treated to date, 16 have been crack cocaine users.

Wrack


Definition:

  • (n.) A thin, flying cloud; a rack.
  • (v. t.) To rack; to torment.
  • (n.) Wreck; ruin; destruction.
  • (n.) Any marine vegetation cast up on the shore, especially plants of the genera Fucus, Laminaria, and Zostera, which are most abundant on northern shores.
  • (n.) Coarse seaweed of any kind.
  • (v. t.) To wreck.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) And it is wracked with cultural conflict between about 12,000 long-time Williston residents and at least 21,000 newcomers who’ve arrived over the past five-odd years.
  • (2) Cyclones will wrack the coast more frequently, and with more intensity.
  • (3) All three states have been wracked with conflict since December 2013, when a power struggle broke out between Salva Kiir, the South Sudanese president, and his former vice-president Riek Machar.
  • (4) Matt Wrack, the general secretary, said: "The government must realise that firefighters cannot accept proposals that would have such devastating consequences for their futures, their families' futures, and the future of the fire and rescue service itself.
  • (5) It represented the first confirmation of US military operations within insurgency-wracked Syria, where Isis gestated into the jihadist organisation that has redrawn the borders of the Middle East.
  • (6) Matt Wrack , the FBU general secretary, said: "The FBU has wanted to settle our dispute for a long time, but the government at Westminster is simply not listening.
  • (7) Yemen was already the poorest country in the Middle East, wracked by conflict and struggling in a transition to a more secure future.
  • (8) The Global Times wrote an editorial on Friday in which it noted that he is the first western official in recent years to have visited the violence-wracked region of Xinjiang and stressed its business potential instead of “finding fault over the human rights issue”.
  • (9) But with their host country wracked by civil war for nearly a year, they’ve had to make other plans.
  • (10) The mechanism of antimutagenicity of water extracts of grass-wrack pondweed (Potamogeton oxyphylus Miquel), curled pondweed (Potamogeton crispus L.) and smartweed (Polygonum hydropiper L.) towards benzo[a]pyrene mutagenicity in Salmonella typhimurium was investigated.
  • (11) In a region already wracked by water scarcity and conflict, more drying could ratchet up tension even further.
  • (12) The transcendence they are remembering is the aim of the art of dancing: the aim of a dancer's entire wracked body to become one with the music.
  • (13) 7.49pm BST Another Man In Suit accuses the Federal Reserve of being wracked with division.
  • (14) Committee members whose future in Momentum is in doubt include Jill Mountford, of the Trotskyist group Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, and the former Militant activist Nick Wrack, both of whom were expelled from the Labour party last year.
  • (15) The western powers played the decisive role in the overthrow of the Libyan regime – acting in the name of protecting civilians, who then died in their thousands in a Nato-escalated civil war, while conflict-wracked Syria was threatened with intervention and Iran with all-out attack.
  • (16) But as well as the absence of several key leaders, including Barack Obama , Angela Merkel and David Cameron , the conference organisers are struggling to adjust to the blurring of battles lines as Europe is wracked by crisis, and emerging economies of China, Brazil, India and Russia pull ahead of the rest of the developing world.
  • (17) In an email trail detailing exchanges between Momentum’s steering committee members, Chessum, an ally of Mountford and Wrack, grew increasingly exasperated as it became clear that the plans, which were drawn up secretly by Lansman, would be approved.
  • (18) The healthcare bill will funnel $100bn to states over a decade to stabilize what are sure to be markets wracked by chaos, assuming this legislation survives intact to Trump’s desk.
  • (19) As well as sending his spin on grunge, punk and rockabilly down the Saint Laurent catwalk, Slimane shoots all the label’s advertising campaigns and unveiled Saint Laurent’s new beginning under his direction with images of Christopher Owens , a classic rock lost boy with a back catalogue of wracked, emotional songs and an action-packed past.
  • (20) The former Himalayan kingdom has been wracked by protests in the wake of the killing of a popular young militant separatist by security forces on 8 July.