rack

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A framework or stand in or on which to hold, hang, or display various articles: a trophy rack; a rack for baseball bats in the dugout; a drying rack for laundry.
2. n. Games A triangular frame for arranging billiard or pool balls at the start of a game.
3. n. A receptacle for livestock feed.
4. n. A frame for holding bombs in an aircraft.
5. n. Slang A bunk; a bed.
6. n. A toothed bar that meshes with a gearwheel, pinion, or other toothed machine part.
7. n. A state of intense anguish.
8. n. A cause of intense anguish.
9. n. An instrument of torture on which the victim's body was stretched.
10. n. A pair of antlers.
11. v. To place (billiard balls, for example) in a rack.
12. v. To cause great physical or mental suffering to: Pain racked his entire body. See Synonyms at afflict.
13. v. To torture by means of the rack.
14. rack out Slang To go to sleep or get some sleep.
15. rack up Informal To accumulate or score: rack up points.
16. idiom. on the rack Under great stress.
17. n. A fast, flashy, four-beat gait of a horse in which each foot touches the ground separately and at equal intervals.
18. v. To go or move in a rack.
19. n. A thin mass of wind-driven clouds.
20. v. To be driven by the wind; scud: low clouds racking by.
21. n. Variant of wrack¹.
22. n. Variant of wrack².
23. v. To drain (wine or cider) from the dregs.
24. n. A wholesale rib cut of lamb or veal between the shoulder and the loin.
25. n. A retail rib cut of lamb or veal, prepared for roasting or for rib chops.
26. n. The neck and upper spine of mutton, pork, or veal.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To stretch; stretch out; strain by force or violence; extend by stretching or straining.
2. To strain so as to rend; wrench by strain or jar; rend; disintegrate; disjoint: as, a racking cough; to rack a ship to pieces by slanting shot.
3. To torture by violent stretching; stretch on a frame by means of a windlass; subject to the punishment of the rack. See rack, n., 2 .
4. Hence To put in torment; affect with great pain or distress; torture in anyway; disturb violently.
5. To strain with anxiety, eagerness, curiosity, or the like; subject to strenuous effort or intense feeling; worry; agitate: as, to rack one's invention or memory.
6. To stretch or draw out of normal condition or relation; strain beyond measure or propriety; wrest; warp; distort; exaggerate; overstrain: chiefly in figurative uses.
7. To exact or obtain by rapacity; get or gain in excess or wrongfully. See rack-rent.
8. To subject to extortion; practise rapacity upon; oppress by exaction.
9. In mining, to wash on the rack. See rack, n., 5 .
10. To place on or in a rack or frame made for the purpose, either for storage or for temporary need, as for draining, drying, or the like.
11. To form into or as if into a rack or grating; give the appearance of a rack to.
12. Nautical, to seize together with cross-turns, as two ropes.
13. n. A bar.
14. n. A frame or apparatus for stretching or straining. Specifically— A windlass or winch for bending a bow; the part of the crossbow in which the gaffle moved. Halliwell.
15. n. An instrument of torture by means of which the limbs were pulled in different directions, so that the whole body was subjected to a great tension, suffcient sometimes to cause the bones to leave their sockets. The form of application of the torture differed at different times. The rack consisted essentially of a platform on which the body was laid, having at one end a fixed bar to which one pair of limbs was fastened, and at the other end a movable bar to which the other limbs were fastened, and which could be forcibly pulled away from the fixed bar or rolled on its own axis by means of a windlass. See judicial torture, under torture.
16. n. Punishment by the rack, or by some similar means of torture.
17. n. Hence A state of torture or extreme suffering, physical or mental; great pain; rending anxiety; anguish. See on the rack, below.
18. n. A grating or open framework of bars, wires, or pegs on or in which articles are arranged or deposited: much used in composition, as in bottle-rack, card-rack, hat-rack, letter-rack, etc. Specifically— A grating on which bacon is laid.
19. n. An openwork siding, high and flaring outward, placed on a wagon for the conveyance of hay or straw, grain in the sheaf, or other light and bulky material.
20. n. In printing, an upright framework, with side-cleats or other supports, for the storing of cases, of boards or galleys of type, etc.: distinguished as case-rack galley-rack. etc.
21. n. Nautical, a fair-leader for a running rigging.
22. n. The cobiron of a grate.
23. n. A framework for a table aboard ship to hold dishes, etc., so as to keep them from sliding or falling off: same as fiddle, 2.
24. n. A frame for holding round shot in holes; a shot-rack.
25. n. In metallurgy, an inclined wooden table on which fine ore is washed on a small scale. It is one of the various simpler forms of the buddle.
26. n. In woolen-cloth manuf., a frame in a stove or room heated by steam-pipes on which the cloth is stretched tightly after washing with fullers' earth.
27. n. In organbuilding, one of the thin boards, with perforations, which support the upper part of the feet of the pipes.
28. n. In machinery, a straight or very slightly curved metallic bar, with teeth on one of its edges, adapted to work into the teeth of a wheel, pinion, or endless screw, for converting a circular into a rectilinear motion, or vice versa. If the rack is curved, it is called a segment-rack. If the teeth aro placed on the rack obliquely and it is used with a worm instead of a wheel, it forms a rack-and-worm gear; In the cut, a is the worm, b the rack, and c a friction-wheel on which the back of b rolls, and which holds b intermeshed with adjective See also cut under mutilated.
29. n. An anglers' creel or fish-basket.
30. n. A fish-weir.
31. n. A measure of lacework counting 240 meshes perpendicularly.
32. n. Reach: as, to work by rack of eye (that is. to be guided by the eye in working).
33. n. That which is extorted; exaction.
34. n. The neck and spine of a fore quarter of veal or mutton, or the neck of mutton or pork.
35. To drive; move; go forward rapidly; stir.
36. To drive, as flying clouds.
37. n. Thin flying broken clouds; especially, detached fragments of raggy cloud, commonly occurringwith rain-clouds.
38. n. Same as wrack: now used in the phrases to go to rack, to go to rack and ruin.
39. n. A rude narrow path, like the track of a small animal.
40. n. A rut in a road.
41. A dialectal form of reck.
42. To relate; tell.
43. To move with the gait called a rack.
44. n. A gait of the horse between a trot and a gallop (or canter), in which the fore feet move as in a slow gallop, while the hind feet move as in a trot (or pace). It is usually an artificial gait, but is sometimes hereditary or natural. There is much confusion of terms in respect to this gait, due to the fact that the gait itself is somewhat varied, according as the racker carries the one or the other fore foot foremost in the galloping motion of the fore feet; that many confound the rack with the pace, the two words often being used as synonymous; and that many have mistaken the use of the words pace and amble. There is abundant evidence that the American “pace” of to-day is the “amble” of Europeȧns of the last century and earlier. The motion of the hind feet is the same in the trot, the pace, and the rack. In the trot the diagonal hind and fore feet move nearly simultaneously. In the pace or amble the hind and fore feet of the same side move nearly simultaneously. See cut in next column.
45. n. A distaff; a rock.
46. To draw off from the lees; draw off, as pure liquor from its sediment: as, to rack cider or wine; to rack off liquor.
47. n. Same as arrack.
48. n. A liquor made chiefly of brandy, sugar, lemons (or other fruit), and spices.
49. n. A young rabbit. See the quotation.
50. To move by means of a rack and pinion.
51. n. A screen composed of parallel narrow strips of plank or iron, occupying a vertical or slightly inclined position and placed across a canal, flume, or mill-race, for the purpose of preventing floating objects from entering the canal or flume.
52. n. plural The sheet piling on the sides of a ferry-slip which serves as a buffer for the boats coming into the slip.
53. n. A horse all skin and bone; a rackabones; also the bones of a dead horse used for various purposes by knackers.

Wiktionary

1. n. A series of one or more shelves, stacked one above the other
2. n. A frame on which to hang various items.
3. n. A device used to torture victims by stretching them beyond their natural limits.
4. n. A pair of antlers (as on deer, moose or elk).
5. n. A cut of meat involving several adjacent ribs
6. n. billiards, snooker, pool A hollow triangle used for aligning the balls at the start of a game.
7. n. slang A woman's breasts.
8. n. climbing, caving A friction device for abseiling, consisting of a frame with 5 or more metal bars, around which the rope is threaded. Also rappel rack, abseil rack.
9. n. climbing, slang A climber's set of equipment for setting up protection and belays, consisting of runners, slings, karabiners, nuts, Friends, etc.
10. v. To place in or hang on a rack.
11. v. To torture (someone) on the rack.
12. v. To cause (someone) to suffer pain
13. v. billiards, snooker, pool To put the balls into the triangular rack and set them in place on the table.
14. v. slang To strike a male in the groin with the knee.
15. v. To (manually) load (a round of ammunition) from the magazine or belt into firing position in an automatic or semiautomatic firearm.
16. v. stretch joints of a person
17. v. To fly, as vapour or broken clouds
18. v. brewing To clarify, and thereby deter further fermentation of, beer, wine or cider by draining or siphoning it from the dregs.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Same as arrack.
2. n. The neck and spine of a fore quarter of veal or mutton.
3. n. Obs., except in a few phrases. A wreck; destruction.
4. n. Thin, flying, broken clouds, or any portion of floating vapor in the sky.
5. v. To fly, as vapor or broken clouds.
6. v. To amble fast, causing a rocking or swaying motion of the body; to pace; -- said of a horse.
7. n. A fast amble.
8. v. To draw off from the lees or sediment, as wine.
9. n. An instrument or frame used for stretching, extending, retaining, or displaying, something.
10. n. An engine of torture, consisting of a large frame, upon which the body was gradually stretched until, sometimes, the joints were dislocated; -- formerly used judicially for extorting confessions from criminals or suspected persons.
11. n. An instrument for bending a bow.
12. n. A grate on which bacon is laid.
13. n. A frame or device of various construction for holding, and preventing the waste of, hay, grain, etc., supplied to beasts.
14. n. A frame on which articles are deposited for keeping or arranged for display; as, a clothes rack; a bottle rack, etc.
15. n. (Naut.) A piece or frame of wood, having several sheaves, through which the running rigging passes; -- called also rack block. Also, a frame to hold shot.
16. n. (Mining) A frame or table on which ores are separated or washed.
17. n. A frame fitted to a wagon for carrying hay, straw, or grain on the stalk, or other bulky loads.
18. n. A distaff.
19. n. (Mech.) A bar with teeth on its face, or edge, to work with those of a wheel, pinion, or worm, which is to drive it or be driven by it.
20. n. obsolete That which is extorted; exaction.
21. v. To extend by the application of force; to stretch or strain; specifically, to stretch on the rack or wheel; to torture by an engine which strains the limbs and pulls the joints.
22. v. To torment; to torture; to affect with extreme pain or anguish.
23. v. To stretch or strain, in a figurative sense; hence, to harass, or oppress by extortion.
24. v. (Mining) To wash on a rack, as metals or ore.
25. v. (Naut.) To bind together, as two ropes, with cross turns of yarn, marline, etc.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. stretch to the limits
2. n. an instrument of torture that stretches or disjoints or mutilates victims
3. v. go at a rack
4. n. a form of torture in which pain is inflicted by stretching the body
5. n. rib section of a forequarter of veal or pork or especially lamb or mutton
6. n. a support for displaying various articles
7. v. seize together, as of parallel ropes of a tackle in order to prevent running through the block
8. v. draw off from the lees
9. n. a rapid gait of a horse in which each foot strikes the ground separately
10. v. obtain by coercion or intimidation
11. v. fly in high wind
12. v. work on a rack
13. n. framework for holding objects
14. n. the destruction or collapse of something
15. v. torment emotionally or mentally
16. v. put on a rack and pinion
17. v. run before a gale
18. v. torture on the rack