To drive; move; go forward rapidly; stir.
To drive, as flying clouds.
To stretch; stretch out; strain by force or violence; extend by stretching or straining.
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.
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 .
Hence To put in torment; affect with great pain or distress; torture in anyway; disturb violently.
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.
To stretch or draw out of normal condition or relation; strain beyond measure or propriety; wrest; warp; distort; exaggerate; overstrain: chiefly in figurative uses.
To exact or obtain by rapacity; get or gain in excess or wrongfully. See rack-rent.
To subject to extortion; practise rapacity upon; oppress by exaction.
In mining, to wash on the rack. See rack, n., 5 .
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.
To form into or as if into a rack or grating; give the appearance of a rack to.
Nautical, to seize together with cross-turns, as two ropes.
noun.
A distaff; a rock.
To move with the gait called a rack.
noun.
A bar.