# rack and ruin

idiom

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/rack-and-ruin
Updated: 2026-08-10

## Meaning

Complete destruction.

## Examples

- 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.

## Origin

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.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.