wrest

Etymology 1

From Middle English wresten, wrasten, wræsten, from Old English wrǣstan (“to twist forcibly, wrench”), from Proto-Germanic *wraistijaną, (compare Proto-Germanic *wrīhaną (“to turn, wind; to cover, envelop”), *wrīþaną (“to weave, twist”), Old Norse reista (“to bend, twist”)), from a derivative of Proto-Indo-European *wreiḱ-, *wreyḱ- (“to bend, twist”), *wreyt- (“to bend”). See also writhe, wry. The noun is derived from the verb.

verb

1. (transitive) To pull or twist violently.
2. (transitive) To obtain by pulling or violent force.
   He wrested the remote control from my grasp and changed the channel.
   Does the devil strive to keep Christ out of men's hearts, and to preserve his own influence over them, by the weapon of ignorance? Christ wrests it from him by letting in a stream of light. 1858, James Foote, “Lecture LVIII. Luke XI. 14–26.”, in Lectures on the Gospel According to Luke. … In Two Volumes, 3rd edition, volume I, Edinburgh: Ogle & Murray, and Oliver & Boyd; London: Hamilton, Adams, & Co., →OCLC, page 689
   Despite this short shrift from descendants and historians, the Jewish peddler was a valued person in rural life. Besides bringing much-needed goods and a break for those exhausted from plowing or laboriously wresting turpentine from pine trees, the visiting peddler was often respected by those God-fearing southerners for what they believed was his direct connection to the Old Testament stories they revered. 2015, Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, “A New Life and a New Cause in Dixie”, in Carolina Israelite: How Harry Golden Made Us Care about Jews, the South, and Civil Rights, Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, page 103
3. (transitive, figurative) To seize.
   [S]he was one of your ſoft ſpoken, canting, whining hypocrites, who with a truly jeſuitical art, could wreſt evil out of the moſt inoffenſive thought, word, look or action; … 1765, Catherine Jemmat, The Memoirs of Mrs. Catherine Jemmat, Daughter of the Late Admiral Yeo, of Plymouth. Written by Herself, 2nd edition, volume I, London: Printed for the author, at Charing-Cross, →OCLC, page 145
   But the arrival of the new members of council from England, naturally had the effect of uniting the old servants of the [East India] Company. [John] Clavering, [George Henry] Monson, and [Philip] Francis formed the majority. They instantly wrested the government out of the hands of [Warren] Hastings; … 1841 October, [Thomas Babington Macaulay], “Art. V.—Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of Bengal. Compiled from Original Papers, by the Rev. G. R. Gleig, M.A. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1841.”, in The Edinburgh Review, or Critical Journal, volume LXXIV, number CXLIX, Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes; for Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, London; and Adam and Charles Black, Edinburgh, →OCLC, page 186
4. (transitive, figurative) To distort, to pervert, to twist.
   And herein is especially displayed the profound, the merciful, and at the same time the righteous discrimination between men, equally involved in ruin; or that decree of election and reprobation, revealed in the Word of God, which, though men of perverse, impure, and unstable minds wrest it to their own destruction, yet to holy and pious souls affords unspeakable consolation. 1619, Philip Schaff, “The Canons of the Synod of Dort, as Held by the Reformed [Dutch] Church in America. [First Head of Doctrine. Of Divine Predestination.]”, in The Creeds of Christendom, with a History and Critical Notes. … In Three Volumes, 4th revised and enlarged edition, volume III (The Evangelical Protestant Creeds, with Translations), New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, published 1877, →OCLC, article VI, page 582
   [I]n the ſeveral Ages of the Church theſe Wretches ſucceſſively have been ſome of the moſt notorious Oppoſers of the Divinity of our Saviour, and would undoubtedly have overthrown the Belief of it in the World, could they by all their Arts of wreſting, corrupting, and falſe interpreting the holy Text, have brought the Scriptures to ſpeak for them; which they could never yet do. 25 December 1665, Robert South, “Jesus of Nazareth Proved the True and Only Promised Messiah. In a Sermon Preached at St. Mary’s, Oxon, before the University, on Christmas-Day, 1665”, in Twelve Sermons upon Several Subjects and Occasions, 5th edition, volume III, London: Printed by H. Clark, for Jonah Bowyer, at the Rose, the West-End of St. Paul's Church-Yard, published 1722, →OCLC, page 295
5. (transitive, music) To tune with a wrest, or key.
   The Harpe. A harpe geueth ſounde as it is ſette / The harper may wreſt it vntunablye 1503 July, William Cornishe [i.e., William Cornysh], “In the Fleete Made by Me William Cornishe otherwise Called Nyshwhete Chapelman with the Most Famose and Noble Kyng Henry the VII. His Reygne the XIX. Yere the Moneth of July. A Treatise betwene Trouth, and Information.”, in John Skelton, edited by J[ohn] S[tow], Pithy Pleasaunt and Profitable Workes of Maister Skelton, Poete Laureate, Imprinted at London: In Fletestreate, neare vnto St Dunstan-in-the-West by Thomas Marshe, published 1568, →OCLC; republished as Pithy Pleasaunt and Profitable Workes of Maister Skelton, Poete Laureate to King Henry the VIIIth, London: Printed for C. Davis in Pater-noster Row, 1736, →OCLC, page 290

noun

1. The act of wresting; a wrench or twist; distortion.
   Whereas therefore it is concluded out of theſe ſo weak Premiſſes, that the retaining of divers things in the Church of England, which other Reformed Churches have caſt out, muſt needs argue that we do not well, unleſs we can ſhew that they have done ill; what needed this wreſt to draw out from on an accuſation of forein Churches? 1676, Richard Hooker, Izaak Walton, “Book IV. Concerning Their Third Assertion, that Our Form of Church-Polity is Corrupted with Popish Orders, Rites and Ceremonies, Banished out of Certain Reformed Churches, whose Example therein We Ought to have Followed”, in The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine, Mr. Richard Hooker, in Eight Books of Ecclesiastical Polity, Compleated out of His Own Manuscripts; with Several Other Treatises by the Same Author, and an Account of His Life and Death [by Izaak Walton], London: Printed by R. White, for Rob[ert] Scott, Tho[mas] Basset, John Wright and Rich[ard] Chiswell, and are to be sold by Robert Boulter at the Turks Head in Cornhil, →OCLC, page 181
2. (music) A key to tune a stringed instrument.
   The Harpe. […] A harper with his wreſt maye tune the harpe wrong / Mys tunying of an Inſtrument ſhal hurt a true ſonge 1503 July, William Cornishe [i.e., William Cornysh], “In the Fleete Made by Me William Cornishe otherwise Called Nyshwhete Chapelman with the Most Famose and Noble Kyng Henry the VII. His Reygne the XIX. Yere the Moneth of July. A Treatise betwene Trouth, and Information.”, in John Skelton, edited by J[ohn] S[tow], Pithy Pleasaunt and Profitable Workes of Maister Skelton, Poete Laureate, Imprinted at London: In Fletestreate, neare vnto Saint Dunstones Churche by Thomas Marshe, published 1568, →OCLC; republished as Pithy Pleasaunt and Profitable Workes of Maister Skelton, Poete Laureate to King Henry the VIIIth, London: Printed for C. Davis in Pater-noster Row, 1736, →OCLC, page 290
3. (obsolete) Active or motive power.
4. (obsolete, rare) Short for saw wrest (“a hand tool for setting the teeth of a saw, determining the width of the kerf”); a saw set.

Etymology 2

forming part of one of the buckets of the wheel]] Possibly a variant of wrist: see the quotation. Wrist is also derived from *wrīþaną (“to weave, twist”), from a derivative of Proto-Indo-European *wreiḱ-, *wreyḱ- (“to bend, twist”), *wreyt- (“to bend”).

noun

1. A partition in a water wheel by which the form of the buckets is determined.
   Fig. 6 is the outline of a wheel having 40 buckets. […] The partitions, which determine the form of the buckets, conſiſt of three different planes or boards AB, BC, CD, which are variouſly named by different artiſts. We have heard them named the Start or Shoulder, the Arm, and the Wrest (probably for wriſt, on account of a reſemblance of the whole line to a human arm); […] 1810, “WATER-Works”, in Encyclopaedia Britannica; or, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature, 4th enlarged and improved edition, volume XX, Edinburgh: Printed by Andrew Bell, the proprietor, for Archibald Constable and Company, Edinburgh; and for Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe, London, →OCLC, page 668, column 1

Etymology 3

A misspelling of rest, probably influenced by wrest (etymology 1, verb and noun).

noun

1. (agriculture, dated, dialectal) A metal (formerly wooden) piece of some ploughs attached under the mouldboard (the curved blade that turns over the furrow) for clearing out the furrow; the mouldboard itself.
   [W]hen giving ley or stubble land a single furrow for a corn crop, the sock should never be so broad as the slice, but an inch or two within it; except, like the bent-sock it comes a good way back on the wrest: because this breadth of feather materially augments the draught; and, by cutting the slice clean out, before being embraced by the wrest, frequently causes it to be shot aside, in place of being turned over. 1822, John Finlayson, “On the Art of Ploughing”, in Treatise on Agricultural Subjects, Glasgow: Printed by William Lang, 62, Bell-Street, sold by Tho[ma]s Lochhead, 2, Park Place, Stockwell; [et al.], →OCLC, page 198
   They [turn-wrest ploughs] are now so constructed that the ploughman can readily shift his coulter by means of a lever, which reaches the bottom of the handles, and also his wrests or mould-boards from side to side, without leaving his station between the handles of his plough, they being so arranged that by withdrawing a small pin and pressing the projecting wrest towards the body of the plough, the mould-boards on either side become alternately the land side when not in work. In the earlier work from which this passage is taken, Cuthbert W. Johnson (1842), “PLOUGH”, in The Farmer’s Encyclopædia, and Dictionary of Rural Affairs, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC, pages 981–982, the word rest is used. 1857, John M[arius] Wilson, “PLOUGH”, in The Rural Cyclopedia, or A General Dictionary of Agriculture, and of the Arts, Sciences, Instruments, and Practice, Necessary to the Farmer, Stockfarmer, Gardener, Forester, Landsteward, Farrier, &c., volumes III (K–P), Edinburgh: A[rchibald] Fullarton and Co., Stead's Place; and 106, Newgate Street, London, →OCLC, page 865, column 1
   The wedge is simply two inclined planes put base to base, and the same reasoning is true of it—that is, the thinner the wedge or more gradual the slope, the more easily it is driven. Applying this to the plough, we find that the coulter, share, wrest, cheek-plates, and sole-shoe, all form more or less continuous parts of a large wedge or moving inclined plane. 1908, Henry Stephens, James MacDonald, Stephens’ Book of the Farm: Dealing Exhaustively with Every Branch of Agriculture … In Three Volumes, 5th edition, volumes I (Land and Its Equipment), division 2, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, page 374