wrest

/rest/

Thân thiện

A child wrests a toy from his brother's grasp.

Definition

1. Verb:
   • To take something by force or violence: To obtain something by pulling or twisting it away from someone or something with a sudden, forceful movement.
   • To gain something with great effort or difficulty: To extract or obtain something (like information, power, or meaning) through a strenuous, persistent struggle, often against resistance.

Usage Examples

• Verb:
  • The police officer managed to wrest the gun from the suspect's hand. (The officer forcibly took the gun.)
  • The rebels sought to wrest control of the capital from the ruling party. (They tried to seize control by force.)
  • It is difficult to wrest a straight answer from him. (It is hard to extract a clear answer through persistent effort.)
  • Critics accused him of wrestling the facts to fit his narrative. (He was accused of distorting the facts.)

Advanced Usage

• "to wrest away": To seize or take something away by force or persistent effort.
  • The new company is trying to wrest away market share from the industry leader.
• "to wrest from": To obtain something from a source, often implying the source is unwilling or resistant.
  • She wrested a promise from him after hours of negotiation.
• Metaphorical Use: Commonly used in contexts of struggle for abstract concepts like power, control, freedom, or meaning.
  • The historian wrested new insights from the ancient manuscripts.

Variants and Related Words

• Wresting (gerund/noun): The act of taking something by force or effort.
  • The wresting of power was a violent affair.
• Wrestler (noun): A person who engages in the sport of wrestling. (Note: This is a distinct but related term from the same root, referring to physical grappling.)
  • The wrestler prepared for his match.

Synonyms

• Wrench: To twist or pull suddenly and violently.
• Seize: To take hold of suddenly and forcibly.
• Extract: To remove or obtain something with effort.
• Wring: To obtain something with difficulty or persistence (e.g., ).

Related Phrasal Verbs

• Wrest back: To regain something by force or effort after losing it.
  • The army fought desperately to wrest back the captured territory.

Related Idioms

• To wrest control from someone's grasp: To take control away from someone who is holding it tightly, either literally or figuratively.
  • The board of directors wrested control from the founder.
• A wrested meaning: An interpretation that is forced or extracted with difficulty, potentially distorting the original intent.
  • His theory is based on a wrested meaning of the poet's words.

Học thuật

Verb

1. 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