Wrake

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. To cause damage, injury, or destruction upon something or someone
2. To inflict harm, suffering, or havoc with deliberate force
3. To visit ruin or vengeance upon a person or thing

Etymology: Old English "wracu" meant revenge, persecution, or misery, and it passed into Middle English as "wrake" with the sense of vengeance or injury inflicted in return. The harm was the original meaning, not an extension of it. The same root appears across early Germanic languages. Gothic "wraka" meant persecution, and matching forms turn up in Middle Low German and Middle Dutch, all traceable to a reconstructed Proto-Germanic "*wrakō." "Wrake" is also a variant of "wrack," the word for wreckage and seaweed cast ashore. The two forms have blurred together, and the earlier "wrake" sense may have influenced the spelling.