wreak havoc
to cause chaos
TRANSLATION
wreak havoc = etwas durcheinander bringen, Schaden anrichten, etwas verwüsten (woerterbuch.info) --- GOOGLE INDEX wreak havoc: approximately 1,200,000 hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
Meanwhile, oil prices topped $70 a barrel today for the first time as a powerful hurricane WREAKED HAVOC in the crude-producing Gulf of Mexico, home to 25% of US oil and gas production.
(RTE news)
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I had sold nearly 2 million albums. On the road, I could escape my demons, but it WREAKED massive emotional HAVOC.
- Siobhan Fahey, Irish musician
(RTE news)
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I had sold nearly 2 million albums. On the road, I could escape my demons, but it WREAKED massive emotional HAVOC.
- Siobhan Fahey, Irish musician
Did you
know?
wreak havoc
verb phrase
- to cause a lot of trouble or damage
(Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms)
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WORD ORIGIN
To wreak is to inflict vengeance or punishment upon a person or to bring about or cause something. It derives from the Middle English wreken and Old English wrecan. Havoc, which is borrowed from Anglo-French havok, means widespread devastation and destruction or chaos and disorder.
Wreak havoc has its roots in the phrase "cry havock", a military expression derived from the Old French "havot", meaning plundering or devastation. It was used as a signal to soldiers in the Middle Ages to pillage and plunder. It was also written as "cry havoc" such as from Shakespeare’s Julius Cesaer:
"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!" (Act 3, scene 1)
There are other variations of the phrase including make havoc, play havoc and wrought havoc, the latter which is used in the past tense. Wrought is often confused as an irregular past tense of wreak. However, wreak takes on a regular past tense form (The storm wreaked havoc across the entire coastline). Wrought is actually an alternative past tense and past participle of work (a carefully wrought plan).
(sources: The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, The American Heritage Dictionary, Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins)
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SYNONYMS
create chaos, desolate, despoil, destroy, devastate, lay waste, play mischief with, ravage, ruin, wreck
(Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus)
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IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS TODAY
say something like:
"We didn’t accomplish anything today. The power outage wreaked havoc on the computer network."
verb phrase
- to cause a lot of trouble or damage
(Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms)
---
WORD ORIGIN
To wreak is to inflict vengeance or punishment upon a person or to bring about or cause something. It derives from the Middle English wreken and Old English wrecan. Havoc, which is borrowed from Anglo-French havok, means widespread devastation and destruction or chaos and disorder.
Wreak havoc has its roots in the phrase "cry havock", a military expression derived from the Old French "havot", meaning plundering or devastation. It was used as a signal to soldiers in the Middle Ages to pillage and plunder. It was also written as "cry havoc" such as from Shakespeare’s Julius Cesaer:
"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!" (Act 3, scene 1)
There are other variations of the phrase including make havoc, play havoc and wrought havoc, the latter which is used in the past tense. Wrought is often confused as an irregular past tense of wreak. However, wreak takes on a regular past tense form (The storm wreaked havoc across the entire coastline). Wrought is actually an alternative past tense and past participle of work (a carefully wrought plan).
(sources: The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, The American Heritage Dictionary, Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins)
---
SYNONYMS
create chaos, desolate, despoil, destroy, devastate, lay waste, play mischief with, ravage, ruin, wreck
(Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus)
---
IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS TODAY
say something like:
"We didn’t accomplish anything today. The power outage wreaked havoc on the computer network."
