Rack and Ruin
. Utter destitution. Here “rack” is a variety of wrack and wreck.
“The worst of all University snobs are those unfortunates who go to rack and ruin from their desire to ape their betters.”—Thackeray: Book of Snobs, chap. xv. p. 87.
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Entry taken from
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable,
edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.