RACKING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does racking mean? 

• RACKING (adjective)
  The adjective RACKING has 1 sense:

1. causing great physical or mental suffering

  Familiarity information: RACKING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• RACKING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Causing great physical or mental suffering

Synonyms:

racking; wrenching

Context example:

a wrenching pain

Similar:

painful (causing physical or psychological pain)

 Context examples 

Every other child must be racking his heart.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

He had no thoughts save for the nerve- racking, body-destroying toil.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

A stranger could not hear this note, and to such a stranger the growling of White Fang was an exhibition of primordial savagery, nerve-racking and blood-curdling.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

When it was over, and Mugridge was back in the galley, he became greasily radiant, and went about his work, humming coster songs in a nerve-racking and discordant falsetto.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

As I was racking my brain as to how I should best describe it, my eyes fell upon the issue of my own Journal for the morning of the 8th of November with the full and excellent account of my friend and fellow-reporter Macdona.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He raised his hands over his head in a sort of mute despair, and then beat his palms together in a helpless way; finally he sat down on a chair, and putting his hands before his face, began to sob, with loud, dry sobs that seemed to come from the very racking of his heart.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

My horror of having committed a thousand offences I had forgotten, and which nothing could ever expiate—my recollection of that indelible look which Agnes had given me—the torturing impossibility of communicating with her, not knowing, Beast that I was, how she came to be in London, or where she stayed—my disgust of the very sight of the room where the revel had been held—my racking head—the smell of smoke, the sight of glasses, the impossibility of going out, or even getting up!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I was sure St. John Rivers—pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was—had not yet found that peace of God which passeth all understanding: he had no more found it, I thought, than had I with my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost elysium—regrets to which I have latterly avoided referring, but which possessed me and tyrannised over me ruthlessly.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

But while he belied Arthur's description, and appeared a gentle lamb rather than a wild man, he was racking his brains for a course of action.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)