What's the difference between wrench and wrest?

Wrench


Definition:

  • (v. t.) Trick; deceit; fraud; stratagem.
  • (v. t.) A violent twist, or a pull with twisting.
  • (v. t.) A sprain; an injury by twisting, as in a joint.
  • (v. t.) Means; contrivance.
  • (v. t.) An instrument, often a simple bar or lever with jaws or an angular orifice either at the end or between the ends, for exerting a twisting strain, as in turning bolts, nuts, screw taps, etc.; a screw key. Many wrenches have adjustable jaws for grasping nuts, etc., of different sizes.
  • (v. t.) The system made up of a force and a couple of forces in a plane perpendicular to that force. Any number of forces acting at any points upon a rigid body may be compounded so as to be equivalent to a wrench.
  • (n.) To pull with a twist; to wrest, twist, or force by violence.
  • (n.) To strain; to sprain; hence, to distort; to pervert.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Bamu also beat him, taking a pair of pliers and wrenching his ear.
  • (2) She lives in Holland Park and welcomes visitors with a gusty wrench of the door and a jubilant "hello".
  • (3) Goldsmith, following in the footsteps of his father , who started the rabid anti-EU referendum campaign, is for a hard Brexit, wrenching us away as brutally and damagingly as possible.
  • (4) In one email, an aide suggests she should “toss a wrench at someone”.
  • (5) The fact that they cannot afford to do so can be gut-wrenching.
  • (6) So it will have been a wrench for Jez, and his embattled entourage, to have to “cave in”, as the Guardian’s report put it, and suspend the MP from the party after David Cameron (who really should leave the rough stuff to the rough end of the trade) had taunted him at PMQs for not acting sooner when the Guido Fawkes blog republished her ugly comments and the Mail on Sunday got out its trumpet.
  • (7) But if you read carefully, Roberts did throw a wrench into the NSA's main defense for what it does: self-policing.
  • (8) "The pictures that we are seeing in Gaza and in Israel are heart-wrenching."
  • (9) Everybody is happy.” Fortunately for Villa, the fact Hull lost 2-0 at Tottenham meant their safety was assured a few hours later – welcome news to the Villa manager Tim Sherwood after a gut-wrenching first half.
  • (10) We are continuing to see heart wrenching reports of sexual abuse and assault, self-harm and hopelessness of refugees detained on Nauru and Manus Island with over 2,000 people left to languish in detention,” Szoke said.
  • (11) Mr Vine said: "Some time ago I decided I would have to leave Newsnight if I went to Radio 2 and that's a wrench, but no journalist could turn down such a magnificent offer from what is the UK's most successful radio station.
  • (12) I recall the sense of dismay I felt that morning when watching the first plane hit and how that morphed, when the second plane came less than twenty minutes later, into a gut-wrenching realization that this was no accident.
  • (13) No parent, hearing the voices of those still seeking news of their children, could fail to imagine the frantic play of hope and despair, the terrible wrenching of attachment.
  • (14) I decided it would do to convey a mixture of can-you-believe-it crossness and wrenching disappointment, selected it, added zilch and pressed send.
  • (15) Wrenching forces exerted on the cervical spine are attenuated, and the face is protected from contact with hard or lacerating surfaces.
  • (16) This throws a monkey wrench into the licensing process.
  • (17) 'A tremendous wrench': Sir Ivan Rogers's resignation email in full Read more He wrote: “I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power.
  • (18) The two cases herein described manifest unusual and distinctive injuries resulting from multiple impacts by adjustable crescent wrenches.
  • (19) He could take the most pitiful souls – his CV was populated almost exclusively by snivelling wretches, insufferable prigs, braggarts and outright bullies – and imbue each of them with a wrenching humanity.
  • (20) Their 18-year relationship made a gut-wrenching but fascinating public story, which began with romantic passion, high hopes and an elopement to Spain.

Wrest


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To turn; to twist; esp., to twist or extort by violence; to pull of force away by, or as if by, violent wringing or twisting.
  • (v. t.) To turn from truth; to twist from its natural or proper use or meaning by violence; to pervert; to distort.
  • (v. t.) To tune with a wrest, or key.
  • (n.) The act of wresting; a wrench; a violent twist; hence, distortion; perversion.
  • (n.) Active or moving power.
  • (n.) A key to tune a stringed instrument of music.
  • (n.) A partition in a water wheel, by which the form of the buckets is determined.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Security forces have also tried to wrest back the Sunni stronghold of Tikrit from a loose alliance of Isis fighters, other jihadist groups and former Saddam Hussein loyalists.
  • (2) Residents of five blocks in Nottingham, called City Heights, set off fireworks to celebrate wresting control of their development from Peverel after a long legal battle.
  • (3) A long campaign to wrest control of the parliamentary agenda from government triumphed today when MPs voted overwhelmingly to establish an elected backbench committee to take responsibility for tracts of Commons business.
  • (4) The truce was short-lived, and by the following February, hundreds of Taliban fighters had recaptured the area, prompting the British, aided by the US Army's 82nd airborne division, to conduct a massive operation in late 2007 to wrest back control of the district centre.
  • (5) Their composure was shattered from the moment Alex McCarthy gifted the visitors an equaliser, all authority wrested away in the blink of an eye and Liverpool , suddenly focused where previously they had been limp and ineffective, the more persuasive threat in what time that remained.
  • (6) They must have thought they had wrested control of this contest having started the second half with such urgency, the excellent Sergio Agüero – "a powerful tank," according to Mourinho – darting behind Gary Cahill to collect Samir Nasri's pass and thump a glorious finish high beyond Petr Cech at his near post.
  • (7) 8 March 2008: Anwar leads an opposition coalition to wrest a third of parliament's seats and five states from the incumbent National Front coalition, which has ruled Malaysia since it became independent from Britain in 1957.
  • (8) Iraqi units, described by commanding general Lloyd Austin as the centerpiece of the war for the moment , are not ready to wrest Mosul or other significant territory from Isis .
  • (9) Iraq’s armed forces, backed by Shia militia, have begun a fresh campaign to wrest control and “liberate” Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, now a stronghold of Islamic State (Isis), the country’s prime minister has said.
  • (10) The terminals were wrested from the control of Field Marshal Khalid Haftar, the head of the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA), a force that dominates in eastern Libya and enjoys Russian and Egyptian support.
  • (11) The forward bustled in, stealing the ball and holding off the centre-half as he attempted to wrest it back, before ripping a glorious shot from a horribly tight angle into the far top corner as Ben Foster edged out to smother.
  • (12) Najib's coalition hopes to win back a large number of parliamentary seats and several states that Anwar's opposition alliance wrested from it in 2008 elections.
  • (13) Take Tarlair Lido in Aberdeen, recently granted £300,000 for immediate repairs which makes its swimming future imaginable, or Brighton 's art deco Saltdean Lido , wrested by campaigners from a developer who was not, shall we say, "swimming friendly".
  • (14) Cameron and Gove are against this, because if London wrested more control of schools back to local government level, then other local authorities would clamour for the same thing.
  • (15) This is what the revolution is about: Ukrainians trying to wrest control of their country from the oligarchs of Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk and elsewhere who – with help from east and west – have robbed them for 23 years.
  • (16) The raid represented an attempt by Macierewicz to wrest immediate control of the centre from Dusza, who had been appointed to run it by Poland’s former centre-right government ousted in October elections by the radical Law and Justice party.
  • (17) Good docs appear to wrest a degree of coherence from the contingent mess of life My life has been spoiled by docs.
  • (18) In front of a record crowd for a women’s final of 32,912 at Wembley, Carter’s 18th-minute goal was enough to wrest the trophy back from Chelsea Ladies, last year’s league and cup winners, who could have no complaints after coming up second best in almost every area of the pitch.
  • (19) The problem is not believed to be the paucity of sports rights that afflicted the programme during the 1990s as Sky attempted to wrest control of every big event from the BBC, but that viewers now see Grandstand as old-fashioned.
  • (20) It won't help the cause one jot to say this, but for those of us who came of age in the 1960s, here comes our final right to wrest from the old moral and religious orthodoxy: the right to die as we please.