Wreck havoc

[Paul Johnston]

And aren't the words historically related anyhow?  Wreak is from OE
wrecan, (short e at that time), and I think the verb wreck comes from
either a version of the same root (with the same reshortening you get in
things like sick from OE se'oc (e' = long close /e/)) or a related noun
wraec or wrec.  I bet you there are British dialects around that have
wreck for wreak (in so much as it's used outside of "to wreak havoc")
but I wouldn't know where.

Paul Johnston
On Thursday, September 15, 2005, at 03:16  PM, Damien Hall wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Damien Hall <halldj at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Wreck havoc
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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