rack

noun

1. A series of one or more shelves, stacked one above the other.
2. Any of various kinds of frame for holding luggage or other objects on a vehicle or vessel.
3. (historical)A device, incorporating a ratchet, used to torture victims by stretching them beyond their natural limits.

   “Ay, but I fear you speak upon the rack, / Where men enforced do speak anything.”

   “During the troubles of the fifteenth century, a rack was introduced into the Tower, and was occasionally used under the plea of political necessity.”

4. A piece or frame of wood, having several sheaves, through which the running rigging passes.
5. (especially, slang)A bunk.

   “Chief Stevens approached my rack and repeatedly ordered me to vacate my rack and report to the working party.”

   “By the time I had unpacked my sea bag, made my rack, and finished a good long hot shower, it was late in the evening.”

   “I took off my helmet, sat it gently down at the head of my rack on the wooden deck, plopped my butt down on my rack again, and began taking off my stateside assbusting boots.”

6. (broadly, slang, uncountable)Sleep.

   “Do I have to do this now? Like, I really need to get some rack.”

7. A distaff.
8. A bar with teeth on its face or edge, to work with those of a gearwheel, pinion, or worm, which is to drive or be driven by it.

   “Just beyond that station the first step is encountered and the rack resorted to, taking the line on a gradient of 1 in 9 over a steeply inclined bridge and through a spiral tunnel.”

   “The ladder-type Riggenbach rack is the one in use on both systems.”

9. A bar with teeth on its face or edge, to work with a pawl as a ratchet allowing movement in one direction only, used for example in a handbrake or crossbow.
10. A cranequin, a mechanism including a rack, pinion and pawl, providing both mechanical advantage and a ratchet, used to bend and cock a crossbow.
11. A set of antlers (as on deer, moose or elk).
12. A cut of meat involving several adjacent ribs.

    “I bought a rack of lamb at the butcher's yesterday.”

13. (obsolete)A bone of a horse.

    “The Par quadratum […] Their Use is to bend the Racks of the Loins with a right Motion forward or downward, but when one only acts, it draws the Loins to one Side somewhat downwards.”

    “Racks, the bones of a dead horse. Term used by horse-slaughterers.”

14. A hollow triangle used for aligning the balls at the start of a game.
15. A plastic tray used for holding and moving chips.
16. (slang, vulgar)A woman's breasts.
17. A friction device for abseiling, consisting of a frame with five or more metal bars, around which the rope is threaded.

    “rappel rack”

    “abseil rack”

18. (slang)A climber's set of equipment for setting up protection and belays, consisting of runners, slings, carabiners, nuts, Friends, etc.

    “I used almost a full rack on the second pitch.”

19. A grate on which bacon is laid.
20. A set with a distributive binary operation whose action on the set is invertible.
21. (slang)A thousand dollars, especially if the proceeds are from a crime.
22. (uncountable)Thin, flying, broken clouds, or any portion of floating vapour in the sky.

    “The winds in the upper region, which move the clouds above, which we call the rack, […] pass without noise.”

    “And the night rack came rolling up.”

    “Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish ... That which is now a horse ... The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct”

23. A fast amble.
24. (obsolete)A wreck; destruction.

    “All goes to rack.”

25. (obsolete)A young rabbit, or its skin.

    “Now, sir, you would say a skin is a skin, we say it is a ' whole,' or a 'half,' or a 'quarter,' or a 'rack,' or a 'sucker. Suckers are skins of infant rabbits, and of little value. Eight racks are equal to one whole.”

    “The skin of a sucker is white, of a quarter, black and white striped, of a rack all black, and of a best all white.”

    “Those would be of different shades of colour according to the time of year at which they were produced, those bred about May-day undergoing no change from their white colour, but from a white rack become a whole skin; […]”

    “Rabbit skins are sorted into wholes, halves, quarters, racks, and suckers, or very small skins.”

26. (alt-of, alternative, uncountable)Alternative form of arak.

    “If it was my officers wanted a stone jar of rack or a dozen of bottled ale, I might manage 'em, but I'm nowhere with sacks.”

27. (abbreviation, alt-of, initialism, uncountable)Initialism of risk-aware consensual kink.

verb

1. To place in or hang on a rack.
2. To torture (someone) on the rack.

   “He was racked and miserably tormented.”

   “As the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt later recalled, his father, Henry VII's jewel-house keeper Henry Wyatt, had been racked on the orders of Richard III, who had sat there and watched.”

3. To cause (someone) to suffer pain.

   “Vaunting aloud but racked with deep despair.”

4. (figuratively)To stretch or strain; to harass, or oppress by extortion.

   “Try what my credit can in Venice do; / That shall be racked even to the uttermost.”

   “The landlords there most shamefully rack their tenants.”

   “Grant that I may never rack a Scripture Similie, beyond the true intent thereof.”

5. (obsolete)To alternately concatenate two words to magical effect.

   “Foꝛ when we heare one racke the name of God,/Abiure the ſcriptures, and his Sauiour Chꝛiſt...”

6. To put the balls into the triangular rack and set them in place on the table.
7. (slang, transitive)To strike in the testicles.

   “Bike7125 raises a great point suggesting that cups could have been recommended "optional" equipment in school PE. I never got racked by a baseball or softball, but we did have a gym teacher, who insisted on a weekly session of a "cruelty sport" called bombardment. The idea was to throw basketballs at a line of guys, and try to hit them. (Guess where most gym bullys aimed!)”

8. (slang)To shoplift (especially in a megastore), often by taking off of a rack.

   “He racked three boxes of gum!”

   “my buddy used to go racking for spray paint at the home despot. then a banger shot him in the head one night.^([sic])”

9. (broadly)To take that which belongs to another, without regard of right or permission.
10. To (manually) load (a round of ammunition) from the magazine or belt into firing position in an automatic or semiautomatic firearm.
11. To move the slide bar on a shotgun in order to chamber the next round.
12. To wash (metals, ore, etc.) on a rack.
13. To bind together, as two ropes, with cross turns of yarn, marline, etc.
14. To tend to shear a structure (that is, force it to bend, lean, or move in different directions at different points).

    “Post-and-lintel construction racks easily.”

    “The racking strength of a wall system is defined in terms of its ability to resist horizon­tal inplane shear forces. The shear, or racking, forces which act on wail systems arise primarily from wind.”

15. To drive; move; go forward rapidly; stir.
16. To fly, as vapour or broken clouds.
17. To clarify, and thereby deter further fermentation of, beer, wine or cider by draining or siphoning it from the dregs.

    “It is in common practice to draw wine or beer from the lees (which we call racking), whereby it will clarify much the sooner.”

    “The Darwin administrator, J.C. Archer, with great ceremony, turned on the flow to rack the precious golden stuff into casks.”

18. To amble fast, causing a rocking or swaying motion of the body; to pace.

    “The other two (only racking, no thorough-paced protestants) watched their opportunity to run away”