Do we say racking or wracking

racking 147 occurrences

I don't want you to marry me now, but by and by, when I shall have made a name as a soldier, oror something," he added in painful turbulence of joy and fear over the great wordswhich he had been racking his small wits to fashion for weeks past, and, now that they were spoken, were not nearly so impressive as he had intended they should be.

" "Let this thy prisoner be set within the cell above the torture chamber, so, lying within the dark he must needs hear them cry below, and in his mind shall he suffer as they suffer, every pang of racking wheel and searing iron.

I hope notperhaps he did not altogether wish to lead him into temptation, any more than I wish to lead my readers, but only to make him, just as I wish to make them, face manfully a real awful question now racking the hearts of hundreds, and see how they will be able to answer the sophist fiendfor honestly, such he iswhen their time comes, as come it will.

Scarcely knowing what he said, what he did, with the fumes of the champagne confusing his brain, the misery of his lost love racking his heart, he said, hoarsely: "I did not knowtill to-night.

Sir Stephen's precarious condition had been known, they said, to his medical adviser, who had for some time past tried to persuade him to relinquish his arduous and nerve-racking occupations, and to take repose.

I stood quite still, racking my brains as to what was the best thing to do.

"I am often racking my brains to think what I shall say next.

"What's happened to Cissie?" Vannie began weeping again with a faint gasping and a racking of her flat chest.

" The three negroes stood motionless in the dusty hallway, motionless save for the racking of Vannie's sobs.

This Spanish ship willingly undertook to carry to Europe and forward to the Admiralty copies of the correspondence that passed between Cook and the Viceroy, which Cook describes as "a paper war between me and His Excellency, wherein I had no other advantage than the racking his invention to find reasons for treating us in the manner he did, for he never would relax the least from any one point.

"How did I get here?" "Youyou came downstairs," stammered Mr. Wilks, still racking his brains in the vain effort to discover how matters stood.

Not an ordinary headache, to disappear with a little cold water and fresh air; but a splitting, racking affair, which made him feel all head and dulness.

"'Let me see,' said he, trying to pretend to be racking his memory; 'the grape-vine pattern?

Jack exclaimed, in racking horror.

I've been racking my brains to remember, all the way up here.

There was a chorus of sounds from the cataract, the river, the wind, the trees, and the birds, a mighty music of elements of the earth and of life, rising and falling rhythmically, and inspiring, but nerve-racking.

It was an amorous, desperate lament; a cry of racking passion condemned to disappointment, writhing in isolation like a wild beast in its cage: Luigi Macchia.

Again his words were interrupted by that racking cough, the sound of which was lost in the applause that greeted his witticism.

But, strong as he was, the unusual exertion of his hours in the saddle, together with his racking anxiety, had told upon muscles and nerves.

You see the hostess standing about the doorway, keeping a factitious smile on her face, and racking her brain to find the requisite nothings with which to greet her guests as they enter.

A thin man, racking thin; a forward-thrusting neck and a bony face and a sad and drooping moustache about his mouth.

So in time the morrow came, and by all rules I ought to have had a racking headache.

Hardened as they were, they noticed that their last racking of the prisoner had benumbed even hope.

The messengers were unarmed, and once inside the house were made prisoners, ironed, and ordered into a corner, where crouched Don Ramon Mora, now enfeebled by mental racking and physical abuse.

Drinking parties were protracted beyond the whole Sunday, having begun by a dinner on Saturday; imbecility and prostrate helplessness were a common result of these bright and jovial scenes; and by what perversion of language, or by what obliquity of sentiment, the notions of pleasure could be attached to scenes of such excessto the nausea, the disgust of sated appetite, and the racking headacheit is not easy to explain.

wracking 5 occurrences

Here was action supplanting stagnationsomething definite succeeding the long nerve-wracking period of conjecture which appeared to lead nowhere save into a labyrinth of endless discussion.

Well, I was continuing my stroll, when I seemed to feel some quaking of the ground, and before one could count twenty, it was as if the island was bent upon wracking itself to pieces.

In despair and doubt she wondered whether he could understand that she, too, had been influenced to perform her soul-wracking task by a sense of honor, of duty to her country equally as potent as that which had impelled him to participate in this terrible plan to destroy New York.

This was a most exasperating if, a heart-wracking if, an if that made him pause among the ruins of his ancient friendship.

It is easy to imagine the sort of comments to which Voltaire, for instance, with his 'wracking wheel' of sarcasm and common-sense, would have subjected such lines as these.

Do we say   racking   or  wracking