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.n. A bar.n. A frame or apparatus for stretching or straining.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.n. Punishment by the rack, or by some similar means of torture.n. Hence A state of torture or extreme suffering, physical or mental; great pain; rending anxiety; anguish. See on the rack, below.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.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.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.n. Nautical, a fair-leader for a running rigging.n. The cobiron of a grate.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.n. A frame for holding round shot in holes; a shot-rack.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.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.n. In organbuilding, one of the thin boards, with perforations, which support the upper part of the feet of the pipes.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.n. An anglers' creel or fish-basket.n. A fish-weir.n. A measure of lacework counting 240 meshes perpendicularly.n. Reach: as, to work by rack of eye (that is. to be guided by the eye in working).n. That which is extorted; exaction.n. The neck and spine of a fore quarter of veal or mutton, or the neck of mutton or pork.To drive; move; go forward rapidly; stir.To drive, as flying clouds.n. Thin flying broken clouds; especially, detached fragments of raggy cloud, commonly occurringwith rain-clouds.n. Same as wrack: now used in the phrases to go to rack, to go to rack and ruin.n. A rude narrow path, like the track of a small animal.n. A rut in a road.A dialectal form of reck.To relate; tell.To move with the gait called a rack.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).n. A distaff; a rock.To draw off from the lees; draw off, as pure liquor from its sediment: as, to rack cider or wine; to rack off liquor.n. Same as arrack.n. A liquor made chiefly of brandy, sugar, lemons (or other fruit), and spices.n. A young rabbit. See the quotation.To move by means of a rack and pinion.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.n. plural The sheet piling on the sides of a ferry-slip which serves as a buffer for the boats coming into the slip.n. A horse all skin and bone; a rackabones; also the bones of a dead horse used for various purposes by knackers.