Other forms: wrecked, wrecking, wrecks
To wreck something is to destroy it completely. Wreck the car, wreck your chances, the storm wrecked the pier.
It is stronger than damage and usually final. The noun is what is left: a shipwreck, a train wreck, the wreck of a car. Of a person, a wreck means somebody in a bad state — a nervous wreck, I was a wreck by Friday. In American English a wreck is also a road accident: car wreck. Note wreckage, meaning the scattered remains, and that train wreck is now used of any slow public disaster.
1verbwreckTo destroy something completely.
“One bad review wrecked the whole opening week.”
2nounleftWhat is left of something destroyed.
“The wreck is still on the seabed and divers visit it.”
3nounstateSomebody in a very bad state.
“She was a nervous wreck by the day of the interview.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
wreck is destruction, or what is left after it.
Also accepted in games: kill off
The word comes through Anglo-Norman from a Norse root about driving or wrecking a ship ashore. In medieval law, wreck meant goods washed up from a wrecked ship, which the crown or the local lord could claim — the physical destruction and the salvage were one word.
Proto-Indo-European
*wreg- — to track; to hunt; to follow
Anglo-Norman
wrek
Middle English
wrek
English, today
wreck
From Middle English wrek, from Anglo-Norman wrek, from Old Norse wrek, from Proto-Germanic wrekaną (“to pursue”), from Proto-Indo-European wreg- (“to track; to hunt; to follow”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA