wrack and ruin
- noun
- /ræk ənd ˈruːɪn/
- Archaic
:
ruina total
- In this puffy wrack and ruin, there are still the ironic tones and sweet delight of the boy amazed and amused by it all.
Examples
-
The storm caused widespread wrack and ruin throughout the coastal town, leaving homes damaged and streets flooded.
-
A house divided upon itself will fall into wrack and ruin.
-
He's brought to wrack and ruin in his prime.
-
She loved Mossgrove and would have hated if you had married someone who would have let the whole place go to wrack and ruin after all the effort she had put into building it up. "I never thought of it like that," Ned said, his face clearing.
Fiction book (1997) -
After years of neglect, the once beautiful estate was left in a state of wrack and ruin.
-
The abandoned factory now stood as a testament to wrack and ruin, its walls crumbling and windows shattered.
Synonyms
849
3.0
Severe damage that makes something no longer exist or cannot be fixed
112
4.2
A person who is very upset or a thing badly damaged
90
4.8
Great destruction that leaves places badly damaged, for example after a war or storm
11
7.7
An area left empty and ruined after a disaster
6
7.6
A complete destruction or great loss that makes something worthless
1
9.3
Complete ruin or collapse of a place
1
7.4
A building or place that has fallen into bad condition
1
3.7
A situation that is a total failure causing big problems
Severe damage that makes something unusable
A state of complete destruction that leaves a place ruined
An abandoned house left to fall apart after a disaster
Antonyms
How Ruined
Surface Forms
Morphology
Both constituents denote destruction (wrack = devastation; ruin = destruction), so their combination functions as an intensifying tautology meaning complete collapse; a B1 learner who knows both words can readily infer this ‘total ruin’ sense. Although 'wrack' is somewhat archaic, given the provided constituent meanings the phrase is transparently compositional and follows a common cross-linguistic pattern of paired synonyms for emphasis.
Etymology
Wrack and ruin may come from an old word wrack that meant a wrecked ship, so you can picture a broken ship and a ruined place together. That's why wrack and ruin means 'complete destruction'.