Meaning of Wrest | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The act of wresting; a wrench or twist; distortion.
2. A partition in a water wheel by which the form of the buckets is determined.
3. 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.
   dated, dialectal
4. A key to tune a stringed instrument.
5. Active or motive power.
   obsolete
6. Ellipsis of saw wrest (“a hand tool for setting the teeth of a saw, determining the width of the kerf”); a saw set.
   abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis, obsolete, rare

Equivalents

Examples

“Whereas therefore it is concluded out of theſe ſo weak Premiſſes, that the retaining of divers things in the Church of England, which other Reformed Churches have caſt out, muſt needs argue that we do not well, unleſs we can ſhew that they have done ill; what needed this wreſt to draw out from on an accuſation of forein Churches?”

“The Harpe. […] A harper with his wreſt maye tune the harpe wrong / Mys tunying of an Inſtrument ſhal hurt a true ſonge”

“The Minstrel […] wore round his neck a silver chain, by which hung the wrest, or key, with which he tuned his harp.”

“Adowne he keſt it with ſo puiſſant wreſt, / That backe againe it did alofte rebowned, / And gaue againſt his mother earth a gronefull ſownd.”

“Fig. 6 is the outline of a wheel having 40 buckets. […] The partitions, which determine the form of the buckets, conſiſt of three different planes or boards AB, BC, CD, which are variouſly named by different artiſts. We have heard them named the Start or Shoulder, the Arm, and the Wrest (probably for wriſt, on account of a reſemblance of the whole line to a human arm); […]”

“[W]hen giving ley or stubble land a single furrow for a corn crop, the sock should never be so broad as the slice, but an inch or two within it; except, like the bent-sock it comes a good way back on the wrest: because this breadth of feather materially augments the draught; and, by cutting the slice clean out, before being embraced by the wrest, frequently causes it to be shot aside, in place of being turned over.”

“They [turn-wrest ploughs] are now so constructed that the ploughman can readily shift his coulter by means of a lever, which reaches the bottom of the handles, and also his wrests or mould-boards from side to side, without leaving his station between the handles of his plough, they being so arranged that by withdrawing a small pin and pressing the projecting wrest towards the body of the plough, the mould-boards on either side become alternately the land side when not in work.”

“The wedge is simply two inclined planes put base to base, and the same reasoning is true of it—that is, the thinner the wedge or more gradual the slope, the more easily it is driven. Applying this to the plough, we find that the coulter, share, wrest, cheek-plates, and sole-shoe, all form more or less continuous parts of a large wedge or moving inclined plane.”

CEFR level