Rest or wrest?
rest is a noun meaning “Relief from work or activity by sleeping; sleep”; wrest is a verb meaning “To pull or twist violently”. Use rest as a noun and wrest as a verb (wrest is also a noun: “The act of wresting; a wrench or twist; distortion”). They sound the same (/ɹɛst/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) rest is about 398 times as common as wrest.
What is the difference between rest and wrest?
| rest | wrest | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun, verb | verb, noun |
| Meaning | Relief from work or activity by sleeping; sleep Any relief from exertion; a state of quiet and relaxation To cease from action, motion, work, or performance of any kind; stop; desist; be without motion | To pull or twist violently To obtain by pulling or violent force The act of wresting; a wrench or twist; distortion |
| Example | I need to get a good rest tonight; I was up late last night | He wrested the remote control from my grasp and changed the channel |
| Forms | rests rests. | wrests, wresting, wrested |
| Pronunciation | /ɹɛst/ /ɹest/ /ɾɛst/ | /ɹɛst/ |
| In writing | 170 times per million words | about once in every 2 million words |
Sources: rest and wrest in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of rest and wrest
rest
- 1
Relief from work or activity by sleeping; sleep
I need to get a good rest tonight; I was up late last night
- 2
To cease from action, motion, work, or performance of any kind; stop; desist; be without motion
My day's work is over; now I will rest
- 3
That which remains
She ate some of the food, but was not hungry enough to eat it all, so she put the rest in the refrigerator to finish later
- 4
To continue to be, remain, be left in a certain way
You can rest assured that a sick child will say when it's again ready to eat, so it won't starve and doesn't need to be cajoled into eating
- 5
Abbreviation of restitution
- 6
Acronym of representational state transfer
- 7
Abbreviation of restaurant
- 8
Contraction of arrest (to capture a criminal)
wrest
- 1
To pull or twist violently
- 2
The act of wresting; a wrench or twist; distortion
- 3
A partition in a water wheel by which the form of the buckets is determined
- 4
datedA 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
- 5
To obtain by pulling or violent force
He wrested the remote control from my grasp and changed the channel
- 6
A key to tune a stringed instrument
- 7
To seize
- 8
To distort, to pervert, to twist
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, rest or wrest?
rest appears 170 times per million words; wrest about once in every 2 million words.
rest 170 times per million wordswrest about once in every 2 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search rest vs wrest?
“rest vs wrest” is searched about 50 times a month on Google and 10 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“wrest vs rest”, “rest or wrest”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.