There is some disagreement, but more sources say it should be rack. However, rack your brains is correct and more common: Catching that infectious disease was a result of 'the area he Iived in,' Starr told Fresh Air. That being said, there is some use of wrack your brains (blue line) as shown by this Google NGram. At the age of 13, Starr was diagnosed with one of the most frightening and potentially deadly diseases on the planet at the time tuberculosis, a bacteria-driven condition that attacks the lungs. The Grammarist agrees it should be rack as well. Artist Ringo Starr Title Wrack My Brain Release Year 1981 Record Label RCA Catalogue. If things are wrecked, they go to “wrack and ruin.” Click on Artist, Title, Record Label or Genres to find more like this. “Wrack” has to do with ruinous accidents, so if the stock market is wracked by rumors of imminent recession, it’s wrecked. You rack your brains when you stretch them vigorously to search out the truth like a torturer. If you are racked with pain or you feel nerve-racked, you are feeling as if you were being stretched on that Medieval instrument of torture, the rack. Shakespeare was one of many authors who used this.įurther, this book on common English errors says it should be rack: It isn't surprising that 'rack' was adopted as a verb meaning to cause pain and anguish. The crude but, one presumes, effective racks often tore the victim's limbs from their bodies. The PhraseFinder agrees that the phrase is rack your brains, adding: with rack (1) in the verb sense of "to torture on the rack " to wrack one's brains is thus erroneous. The verb meaning "to ruin or wreck" (originally of ships) is recorded from 1560s, from earlier intrans. However, according to this entry for wrack in EtymOnline, the term should be 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 the phrase rack something up the word is also always spelled rack. The most common noun sense of rack, ‘a framework for holding and storing things’, is always spelled rack, never wrack. The relationship between the forms rack and wrack is complicated. Says that the phrase could use either wrack or rack. A mix of some of my favourite Beatles solo songs from between 1969 and. The Oxford Dictionary Online (now Oxford Languages)
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