wreck and ruin

[Jonathan Lighter]

Don't forget the still more despised to "wreck havoc."

125,000 RGs.

JL

On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 1:58 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: wreck and ruin
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Feb 5, 2010, at 2:00 PM, Jon Lighter wrote:
> >
> >
> > OED has the prescriptively "correct" "rack and ruin" sv "rack," but an
> > advanced search turns up the despised "wreck and ruin,"
> > which makes no less sense, from the 1880s.
> >
> > Here's another:
> >
> > 1901 in  H. G. Wells _Twelve Stories and a Dream_ (London:
> > Macmillan, 1903)
> > 297: I...left all those things to wreck and ruin just to save a
> > remnant at
> > least of my life.
>
> not in the eggcorn database, so far as i can tell (we do have "wreck
> havoc" and "wreckless").
>
> the OED says "rack" in "rack and ruin" is a variant of "wrack"
> 'destruction', and indeed there are "to wrack" cites from 1412 on,
> including some for "go to wrack and ruin".
>
> meanwhile, in the first "wreck" entry, the OED has "go to wreck" cites
> from a1547 on, including a "go to wreck and ruin" cite from 1877.
>
> and a google search on {"to wreck and ruin"} pulls up large numbers of
> examples, though google does ask if i meant "to wrack and ruin", and
> there are enormous numbers of hits for *that*.  several dictionaries,
> including NOAD2, give "rack" and "wrack" as variants in this idiom.
>
> the world of rack/wrack/wreck (+ wreak) is in serious disorder.
>
> arnold
>
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