rack and ruin
Complete destruction.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
“The old house is falling into rack and ruin.”
“Without regular maintenance, your car will quickly fall into rack and ruin.”
“He lets his expensive tools go to rack and ruin in the rain.”
“After years of neglect, the once beautiful garden has fallen into rack and ruin.”
“If the city council does not fix the local library soon, the entire building will go to rack and ruin.”
“The business went to rack and ruin after the owner stopped paying attention to the customers and the bills.”
“The historic theater will go to rack and ruin if the community cannot raise enough money to repair the leaking roof before winter begins.”
“The once prosperous estate, left untended for decades, eventually collapsed into a state of total rack and ruin.”
first recorded 16th c.
The term appears in 1599 as a phonetic variant of *wrack and ruin*. It is a tautological coupling of two synonyms for destruction, preserving the Middle English *wrak*, which denoted a shipwreck or something cast ashore. Though the spelling shifted to suggest the instrument of torture, the original sense remains anchored in the remnants of a vessel lost at sea.
Last updated August 10, 2026