wreck [ME] When it first appeared wreck meant ‘cargo or wreckage washed ashore from a wrecked or stranded vessel’. The word came into English from Old French wrec. The source was an Old Norse word meaning ‘to drive’ that was related to wreak, ‘to cause a lot of damage or harm’, and to *rack. A person in a state of stress or emotional exhaustion has been a wreck since the 1790s and a nervous wreck since about 1870. Wretch [OE] and wretched [ME] are related to wreak.