Wreck havoc

[Damien Hall]

Spotted in *Metro* (Philadelphia edition), 15 September 2005, p7 (letters):

'We all know that Mother Nature does not play the race card and did not
intentionally pick a predominantly African-American coastline to wreck havoc.'

It doesn't look like ADS-L has commented on this before.  The ghits stats are

WREAK HAVOC     3,733,000 (including WREAKING / -ED / -S HAVOC)
WRECK HAVOC     273,300   (including WRECKING / -ED / -S HAVOC)

So not a negligible number of hits for WRECK.

It looks like a sort of semantic blend to me:  something that wreaks havoc is,
in so doing, wrecking the thing it wreaks havoc upon.  That, combined with the
fact that 'wreak' only appears in this phrase now (doesn't it?), and so is
uncommon enough for speakers to think it is wrong, seems to me to explain the
'wreck' form.

Damien Hall
University of Pennsylvania