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rack and ruin, go to



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Idioms and Phrases

Also, go to wrack and ruin . Become decayed, decline or fall apart, as in After the founder's death the business went to rack and ruin . These expressions are emphatic redundancies, since rack and wrack (which are actually variants of the same word) mean “destruction” or “ruin.” [Mid-1500s]

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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