wrastle

English

Etymology

From Middle English wrastlen. See wrestle.

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /ˈɹæsl̩/
Rhymes: -æsəl

Verb

wrastle (third-person singular simple present wrastles, present participle wrastling, simple past and past participle wrastled)

(transitive, intransitive, obsolete or British, dialectal or US, informal) To wrestle (someone or something).
- c. 1635 (date written), Henry Wotton, “Of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex; and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham: Some Observations by Way of Parallel in the Time of Their Estates of Favour”, in Reliquiæ Wottonianæ. Or, A Collection of Lives, Letters, Poems; […], London: […] Thomas Maxey, for R[ichard] Marriot, G[abriel] Bedel, and T[imothy] Garthwait, published 1651, →OCLC, page 11:
  [H]e [the Earl of Essex] was to wraſtle with a Queens declyning, or rather with her very ſetting Age (as we may term it,) which, beſides other reſpects, is commonly even of it ſelfe the more umbratious and apprehenſive, as for the moſt part all Horizons are charged with certain Vapours towards their Evening.
- 1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros‎^[1], London: Jonathan Cape, page 20:
  And the laws of your wrastling are that neither shall strangle his adversary with his hands, nor bite him, nor claw nor scratch his flesh, nor poach out his eyes, nor smite him with his fists, nor do any other unfair thing against him, but in all other respects ye shall wrastle freely together. And he that shall be brought to earth with hip or shoulder shall be accounted fallen.

Anagrams

Lawters, Walters, wastrel

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “wrastle”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)