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)

1. (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] vvas to vvraſtle vvith a Queens declyning, or rather vvith her very ſetting Age (as vve may term it,) vvhich, beſides other reſpects, is commonly even of it ſelfe the more umbratious and apprehenſive, as for the moſt part all Horizons are charged vvith certain Vapours tovvards their Evening.

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 The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.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.)