Saturday, April 15, 2006

My brain is Wracked

"I'm racking my brian" -- we've all used it, and I confirmed today that "rack" (derived from the torture device) is the correct spelling. However, I believe in the seldom used phrase "my brain is wracked" the correct spelling of "wracked" is with the leading 'w', which means ' damage or destruction', and is related to wreck and wreak.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you know that "Wrack" is also a term for sea weed?
I had to learn a song for a music festival once that was called "The Sea Wrack" - I thought it was all about lost love; turned out that it was about someone getting caught up in the sea kelp and drowning - thereby being the 'lost love'!

Anonymous said...

Hope Brian didn't mind you racking him... Perhaps he quite enjoyed it.