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Chambers (1908)

Wreck

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This edition’s origin note

[A.S. wræc, expulsion—wrecan, to drive, Low Ger. wrak, Dut. wrak, Ice. reki, a thing drifted ashore; a doublet of wrack.]

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The complete extracted entry

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Wreck, rek, n. destruction: destruction of a ship: ruins of a destroyed ship: remains of anything ruined: shipwrecked property.—v.t. to destroy or disable: to ruin.—v.i. to suffer wreck or ruin.—ns. Wreck′age, the act of wrecking: wrecked material; Wreck′er, a person who purposely causes a wreck or who plunders wreckage: one who lures a ship on to the rocks for purposes of plunder: one who criminally ruins anything: a person employed by the owners in recovering disabled vessels or their cargo.—adj. Wreck′ful, causing ruin.—n. Wreck′-mas′ter, a person taking charge of a disabled ship and its cargo.—Wreck commissioners, a tribunal which inquires into shipping disasters.—Receivers of wrecks, wreck-masters. [A.S. wræc, expulsion—wrecan, to drive, Low Ger. wrak, Dut. wrak, Ice. reki, a thing drifted ashore; a doublet of wrack.]

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  • Historical scholarship from 1908; not current consensus or editorial verification.
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  • Chambers consulted earlier dictionaries including Skeat and the New English Dictionary; overlapping claims are not independent scholarly votes.

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Edition, rights and traceability

Chambers’s Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language
Thomas Davidson (editor)
1908

Public-domain-US ↗ · United States

Publisher marks these historical texts public domain in the USA. Transformed book text excludes Gutenberg branding; source attribution is a bibliographic acknowledgment. No non-US public-domain determination is made.

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