wrest
verb
- get violently
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ɹɛst/
noun
Etymology: A misspelling of rest, probably influenced by wrest (etymology 1, verb and noun).
- A metal (formerly wooden) piece of some ploughs attached under the mouldboard (the curved blade that turns over the furrow) for clearing out the furrow; the mouldboard itself.
“[W]hen giving ley or stubble land a single furrow for a corn crop, the sock should never be so broad as the slice, but an inch or two within it; except, like the bent-sock it comes a good way back on the wrest: because this breadth of feather materially augments the draught; and, by cutting the slice clean out, before being embraced by the wrest, frequently causes it to be shot aside, in place of being turned over.”
“They [turn-wrest ploughs] are now so constructed that the ploughman can readily shift his coulter by means of a lever, which reaches the bottom of the handles, and also his wrests or mould-boards from side to side, without leaving his station between the handles of his plough, they being so arranged that by withdrawing a small pin and pressing the projecting wrest towards the body of the plough, the mould-boards on either side become alternately the land side when not in work.”
verb
Etymology: From Middle English wresten, wrasten, wræsten, from Old English wrǣstan (“to twist forcibly, wrench”), from Proto-Germanic *wraistijaną, (compare Proto-Germanic *wrīhaną (“to turn, wind; to cover, envelop”), *wrīþaną (“to weave, twist”), Old Norse reista (“to bend, twist”)), from a derivative of Proto-Indo-European *wreiḱ-, *wreyḱ- (“to bend, twist”), *wreyt- (“to bend”). See also writhe, wry. The noun is derived from the verb.
- To pull or twist violently.
- To obtain by pulling or violent force.
“He wrested the remote control from my grasp and changed the channel.”
“[D]id not ſhe / Of Timna [Delilah] firſt betray me, and reveal / The ſecret wreſted from me in her highth / Of Nuptial Love proteſt, carrying it ſtrait / To them who had corrupted her, my Spies, / And Rivals?”
- To seize.
“[S]he was one of your ſoft ſpoken, canting, whining hypocrites, who with a truly jeſuitical art, could wreſt evil out of the moſt inoffenſive thought, word, look or action; [...]”
“But the arrival of the new members of council from England, naturally had the effect of uniting the old servants of the [East India] Company. [John] Clavering, [George Henry] Monson, and [Philip] Francis formed the majority. They instantly wrested the government out of the hands of [Warren] Hastings; [...]”
- To distort, to pervert, to twist.
“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.”
“Thou ſhalt not wreſt the iudgement of thy poore in his cauſe.”
- To tune with a wrest, or key.
“The Harpe. A harpe geueth ſounde as it is ſette / The harper may wreſt it vntunablye”