wrest
/ɹɛst/verb, noun
wrest is spelled W-R-E-S-T: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 45,363rd most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “rest vs wrest” about 50 times a month (Google, United States). As a verb, wrest means “To pull or twist violently” (English Wiktionary, September 2026).
How many letters and syllables are in wrest?
| Letters | 5: W-R-E-S-T |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 2 million words; the 45,363rd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is wrest?
Wrest appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 45,363rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce wrest?
- /ɹɛst/
Wrest has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-au-wrest.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with wrest
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: rest (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with wrest?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as wrest.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: trews, strew.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of wrest
- wrests present, singular, he/she/it, plural
- wresting participle, present
- wrested participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does wrest mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
verb
- 1
To pull or twist violently.
- 2
To obtain by pulling or violent force.
He wrested the remote control from my grasp and changed the channel.
- 3
To seize.
- 4
To distort, to pervert, to twist.
- 5
To tune with a wrest, or key.
noun
- 1
The act of wresting; a wrench or twist; distortion.
- 2
A key to tune a stringed instrument.
- 3
obsoleteActive or motive power.
- 4
obsoleterareEllipsis of saw wrest (“a hand tool for setting the teeth of a saw, determining the width of the kerf”); a saw set.
- 5
A partition in a water wheel by which the form of the buckets is determined.
- 6
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.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Wrest in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does wrest come from?
From Middle English wresten, wrasten, wræsten, from Old English wrǣstan (“to twist forcibly, wrench”), from Proto-Germanic *wraistijaną, (compare Proto-Germanic *wrīhaną (“to turn, wind; to cover, envelop”), *wrīþaną (“to weave, twist”), Old Norse reista (“to bend, twist”)), from a derivative of Proto-Indo-European *wreiḱ-, *wreyḱ- (“to bend, twist”), *wreyt- (“to bend”). See also writhe, wry. The noun is derived from the verb.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).