wrest /ɹɛst/verb 5noun 6forms 3 verb5 •To pull or twist violently. •To obtain by pulling or violent force.He wrested the remote control from my grasp and changed the channel. •(figurative) To seize.[S]he was one of your soft spoken, canting, whining hypocrites, who with a truly jesuitical art, could wrest evil out of the most inoffensive thought, word, look or action; [...] — 1765 •(figurative) To distort, to pervert, to twist.And I beseech you / Wrest once the Law to your authority, / To do a great right, do a little wrong, / And curbe this cruell deuill of his will. — 1596 •To tune with a wrest, or key.The Harpe. A harpe geueth sounde as it is sette / The harper may wrest it vntunablye — 1503 noun6 •The act of wresting; a wrench or twist; distortion. •A key to tune a stringed instrument.The Minstrel […] wore round his neck a silver chain, by which hung the wrest, or key, with which he tuned his harp. — 1819 •A partition in a water wheel by which the form of the buckets is determined. •(dialect, old-fashioned) A metal (formerly wooden) piece of some ploughs attached under the mouldboard (the curved blade that turns over the furrow) for clearing out the furrow; the mouldboard itself. •(no longer used) Active or motive power.Adowne he kest it with so puissant wrest, / That backe againe it did alofte rebowned, / And gaue against his mother earth a gronefull sownd. — 1590 •(no longer used, rare) Ellipsis of saw wrest (“a hand tool for setting the teeth of a saw, determining the width of the kerf”); a saw set. formswrested · wresting · wrests
