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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
wrest
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ VERB
try
▪ Here in these slum streets existed an army of the unskilled, all trying to wrest a living anyway they could.
▪ Feet braced, back arched, she put both hands on the machine, trying to wrest it back.
▪ Mr Hikmatyar is trying to wrest control of the capital from the defence minister, Ahmad Shah Masood.
▪ He seized the broomstick between his strong teeth and began to leap about, trying to wrest it from Angela's grasp.
▪ Yet basically it was a team of people trying to wrest power, not a populist-based overthrow.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ A security guard managed to wrest the gun from the man.
▪ The Democrats failed in wresting control of Congress from the Republicans.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Feet braced, back arched, she put both hands on the machine, trying to wrest it back.
▪ I stood up, wresting myself out of this nightmare.
▪ In their view, the automatic machinery was unreliable and the management was wrong to attempt to wrest controls from the shop-floor.
▪ Mr Hikmatyar is trying to wrest control of the capital from the defence minister, Ahmad Shah Masood.
▪ Only the inner satellites were its permanent property; the Sun could never wrest them from its grasp.
▪ That alliance promised the prospect of a kingdom in the areas which they wrested from Ottoman control.
▪ The former building society is understood to be prepared to take court action if it does not wrest the compensation from Lloyds.
▪ The thought of reclaiming what had been wrongfully wrested from him began to sough through every fevered fiber of his being.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Wrest

Wrest \Wrest\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Wrested; p. pr. & vb. n. Wresting.] [OE. wresten, AS. wr?stan; akin to wr?? a twisted band, and wr[=i]?n to twist. See Writhe.]

  1. To turn; to twist; esp., to twist or extort by violence; to pull of force away by, or as if by, violent wringing or twisting. ``The secret wrested from me.''
    --Milton.

    Our country's cause, That drew our swords, now secret wrests them from our hand.
    --Addison.

    They instantly wrested the government out of the hands of Hastings.
    --Macaulay.

  2. To turn from truth; to twist from its natural or proper use or meaning by violence; to pervert; to distort.

    Wrest once the law to your authority.
    --Shak.

    Thou shalt not wrest the judgment of thy poor.
    --Ex. xxiii. 6.

    Their arts of wresting, corrupting, and false interpreting the holy text.
    --South.

  3. To tune with a wrest, or key. [Obs.]

Wrest

Wrest \Wrest\, n.

  1. The act of wresting; a wrench; a violent twist; hence, distortion; perversion.
    --Hooker.

  2. Active or moving power. [Obs.]
    --Spenser.

  3. A key to tune a stringed instrument of music.

    The minstrel . . . wore round his neck a silver chain, by which hung the wrest, or key, with which he tuned his harp.
    --Sir W. Scott.

  4. A partition in a water wheel, by which the form of the buckets is determined.

    Wrest pin (Piano Manuf.), one of the pins around which the ends of the wires are wound in a piano.
    --Knight.

    Wrest plank (Piano Manuf.), the part in which the wrest pins are inserted.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
wrest

Old English wræstan "to twist, wrench," from Proto-Germanic *wraistjan (source of Old Norse reista "to bend, twist"), from PIE *wreik- "to turn" (see wry). Meaning "to pull, detach" (something) is recorded from c.1300. Meaning "to take by force" (in reference to power, authority, etc.) is attested from early 15c. Related: Wrested; wresting.

Wiktionary
wrest

n. 1 The act of wresting; a wrench or twist; distortion. 2 (context obsolete English) active or motive power. 3 (context music English) A key to tune a stringed instrument. 4 A partition in a water wheel by which the form of the buckets is determined. vb. 1 To pull or twist violently. 2 To obtain by pulling or violent force. 3 (context figuratively English) To seize. 4 (context figuratively English) To twist, pervert, distort. 5 To tune with a wrest, or key.

WordNet
wrest

v. obtain by seizing forcibly or violently, also metaphorically; "wrest the knife from his hands"; "wrest a meaning from the old text"; "wrest power from the old government"

Usage examples of "wrest".

And although she had worked to wrest control of the shifter pack from his nephew Acier, in the end Acier had been victorious.

Such were the remonstrances made to his catholic majesty with respect to the illegality of the prize, which the French East India company asserted was taken within shot of a neutral port, that the Penthievre was first violently wrested out of the hands of the captors, then detained as a deposit, with sealed hatches, and a Spanish guard on board, till the claims of both parties could be examined, and at last adjudged to be an illegal capture, and consequently restored to the French, to the great disappointment of the owners of the privateer.

Ibrahim wrested Syria from the Porte, and the Ottoman empire was tottering to its fall, unless the European states should interfere to prevent it, or Russia should realize her long-cherished schemes of aggrandizement by taking the shores of the Bosphorus, which the Sultan was not able to defend, under her own protection.

July, Napoleon took revenge at Wagram for the two days of Aspern, and wrested again from the Archduke Charles the laurels won at the latter place.

Spurred on by their avariciousness and vaulting ambition, they had endeavored to wrest her empire away from her in the most underhanded way, seriously underestimating her in the process.

Maiden Court had stood four-square to the wind since its first owner, a wild Norman nobleman, who had dug its first sod and had relished the battle to wrest its acres from the forest, had laid azide his battle dress and founded his family, and that was good enough for Harry.

Whether in a Siberian labor camp, or sweating in the Baku oil fields, or turned into an inhuman on the surface of Mars, his life was shit and it would stay that way until he could make it something else, until he could wrest his due from the oppressors.

Had he wanted a share of the estate that Bitten planned to wrest away from Nicky?

Now he knew that something more than revenge had prompted Rokoff to pitch him overboard--the Russian had managed to obtain possession of the papers Tarzan had wrested from him at Bou Saada.

Yossarian, once he had plugged his headset back into the intercom system, after it had been jerked out when Dobbs wrested the controls away from Huple and hurled them all down suddenly into the deafening, paralyzing, horrifying dive which had plastered Yossarian helplessly to the ceiling of the plane by the top of his head and from which Huple had rescued them just in time by seizing the controls back from Dobbs and leveling the ship out almost as suddenly right back in the middle of the buffeting layer of cacophonous flak from which they had escaped successfully only a moment before.

No power in the world that I know of is strong enough to wrest her away from a sorceress of the Coven who is wearing the stone.

We lost your father and several more when we tried to wrest Pasgen and Rhoslyn from Vidal Dhu, and their mother Llanelli gave herself up to the Unseleighe because she could not bear to lose her children.

Like Hor Vastus, he too dreaded the truth and would not be the one to wrest a statement from me.

By endeavouring to work upon my feelings, in thus appealing to my heart, you have been striving to wrest from me a confession, which perhaps I ought not to make.

In other cases, not a few, the Scriptures, perverted from their true purpose and wrested by a vicious and conceited exegesis, were brought into collision with the law written on the heart.