What is "racked"

Usage examples of "racked".

Full of amorous wishes and having to be content with the teasing pleasure of seeing one another through a wretched grating, we racked our brains to find out some way to be alone together to do what we liked, without any risk.

I may observe that on this occasion we had an opportunity of ascertaining that good Burgundy, well racked off, and in casks hermetically sealed, does not lose its quality on a sea voyage.

Bellis blenched when that began, remembering the misery of the nightmares that had racked New Crobuzon and that ultimately had led her here.

The joints of the Bucentaur are racked by time and many voyages to the Lido.

Thelma whispered, gasping to catch her breath as another bout of coughing racked her frail frame.

Although I was delighted at having obtained every favour I could possibly wish for in the uncomfortable position we had been in, I racked my brain to contrive the means of securing more complete enjoyment for the following night, but I found during the afternoon that the feminine cunning of my beautiful Greek was more fertile than mine.

Muldemar brandy was racked in lovely hand-blown globelets, and Prestimion had served a generous portion of his hundred-year-old stock to all.

At these words, which I pronounced in a serious way, Esther went into a reverie, but I was not going to lose the superiority I had over her, and racked my brains to find some convincing prediction the oracle might make to her, and while I was doing so dinner was announced.

I saw the poor, and the degraded, and the racked, and the priest-ridden, tillers and peoplers of the soil, which made the substance beneath the glittering and false surface,--the body of that vast empire, of which I had hitherto beheld only the face, and THAT darkly, and for the most part covered by a mask!

While Jerome racked his practice sword and changed from padded practice robe to a regular one, Ribaud carefully outlined the proper procedure for Personal Audience with the Grandfather.

Racked by a spasm of visceral revulsion, Verrain watched, riveted, as the moment continued to unfold.

Doubled over his clasped hands, he curled in on himself, racked by a shuddering spasm.

It racked me to recall past happiness and the greater peril there was of conjuring up its apparition, the quicker the thible ran round, and the faster the handfuls of meal fell into the water.

Caryll continued, nevertheless, to advance towards him, Mistress Hortensia remaining in the background, a quiet spectator, betraying nothing of the anxieties by which she was being racked.

The workers, on the other hand, though racked by disease and neurosis bred of their cramping environment, were on the whole psychologically more robust.