How to Use wrest in a Sentence

wrest

1 of 2 verb
  • He tried to wrest control of the company from his uncle.
  • Still, somebody out there knows that our art needs to wrest it back, to take the trash in.
    — Wesley Morris, New York Times, 12 Oct. 2022
  • The two women have agreed to make this climb as a way to wrest Becky out of her funk.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 10 Aug. 2022
  • Women are wrested from their seats and don’t return.
    — Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 29 Apr. 2026
  • Some of its creditors have moved to wrest control of brands Ruyi bought.
    — Trefor Moss, WSJ, 21 Feb. 2022
  • Will Manchester City wrest their crown back?
    — Sukhman Singh, New York Times, 24 Dec. 2025
  • All will be challenged to fight for playing time and wrest it from the veteran players.
    — Dom Amore, courant.com, 3 Nov. 2021
  • MacDermot tried his best to wrest that control away from Marist.
    — Matt Le Cren, Chicago Tribune, 15 Mar. 2026
  • There were only remnants of the glue that once held the spikes in place, as if someone—some bird—had wrested them free.
    — Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, 15 July 2023
  • That was when microbes wrested energy from light and, in the process, breathed new life into the world.
    — Quanta Magazine, 10 June 2026
  • Biles took it to the Pitt sideline to celebrate, and Wade tried to wrest the ball away.
    — David Ubben, New York Times, 29 Sep. 2025
  • Trying to wrest control from the outside hasn’t worked for Kendall, either.
    — Hunter Harris, Vulture, 13 Dec. 2021
  • Alekseyev tried to wrest away the gun and was shot again in the chest before the attacker fled, the report said.
    — Los Angeles Times, 6 Feb. 2026
  • He's also accused of trying to wrest a riot shield away from an officer.
    — Bill Bowden, Arkansas Online, 19 Sep. 2023
  • If elections are more about wresting power from the other side, how does our country move forward?
    — Boston Herald Editorial Staff, Boston Herald, 6 Nov. 2025
  • Trotsky hurled items from the desk at Mercader before wresting the ice pick from his grip.
    — Josh Ireland, Harpers Magazine, 24 Feb. 2026
  • For centuries, families like his have scurried up açaí trees to wrest free thickets of dripping berries.
    — Washington Post, 28 Nov. 2021
  • The Houthis have instead pressed their campaign to wrest control of Marib province.
    — Washington Post, 1 Oct. 2021
  • Drivers can still wrest control of the gearbox by way of steering wheel paddles (above), but the third pedal is gone.
    — Bill Roberson, Forbes, 2 Sep. 2021
  • Her three nieces were actively involved in wresting, volleyball, and track and field.
    — Kate Armanini, Chicago Tribune, 28 Jan. 2024
  • Kantamanto is trying to wrest back some measure of control.
    — Jasmin Malik Chua, Footwear News, 8 June 2026
  • No existing rival has wrested market share from Google.
    — Julia Shapero, The Hill, 2 Sep. 2025
  • Brandon Tsay, whose family owns the studio, wrested the gun from Tran’s hands.
    — Summer Lin, Los Angeles Times, 17 Dec. 2023
  • My parents were just children when they were wrested from their homes into tarpaper barracks surrounded by barbed wire.
    — Julie Morita, Chicago Tribune, 19 Feb. 2026
  • And next year, Republicans need to flip only a handful of seats to wrest power away from Democrats.
    — The Washington Post, Arkansas Online, 10 Oct. 2021
  • The journalist might feel the need to wrest some hot information from the subject, or find some aha moment and then the subject gets their guard up.
    — Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times, 21 Feb. 2026
  • Guin was on top of Tim then and slapping his ears, trying to wrest the phone away for a long time after the Jones household had gone silent.
    — Kathleen Alcott, Harper’s Magazine , 27 Apr. 2022
  • The prospect of prison time may have played into his party’s efforts to try to wrest control of Congress away from Castro.
    — Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times, 25 Jan. 2022
  • The brown-and-white hawk briefly relented, hovering a few feet overhead before swooping down again to try to wrest the snake from Jones.
    — Jonathan Edwards, Washington Post, 8 Aug. 2023
  • Trump just days ago said the United States wanted to wrest back control of Bagram Air Base.
    — Ian Swanson, The Hill, 20 Sep. 2025

wrest

2 of 2 noun
  • Karamo is now backing a lawsuit seeking to wrest control of the building from the trust.
    — Paul Egan, Detroit Free Press, 9 Jan. 2024
  • Carter attempts to wrest control of his life by controlling the manner of his death.
    — Gayle Sequeira, Vulture, 16 May 2025
  • Is this our chance to wrest control of hyperpop (and music in general) from the robots?
    — Emma Specter, Vogue, 26 June 2023
  • Jack Svetich was explaining how Crown Point was able to wrest control Tuesday.
    — Michael Osipoff, Chicago Tribune, 28 Feb. 2023
  • The Nunez class-action case inches ever closer to the appointment of a receiver to wrest management of the jails from the city.
    — Graham Rayman, New York Daily News, 12 Feb. 2025
  • In the last year, the elder Reed has managed to wrest control back from a younger, more diverse group of Democrats — mostly through shenanigans with rules and fees and lies.
    — Kyle Whitmire | [email protected], al, 14 June 2023
  • Agency leaders under Kennedy have made other unprecedented moves in recent months to wrest control over the nation's vaccines process.
    — Nicole Brown Chau, CBS News, 3 July 2025
  • The goal of the constitutional amendment in Michigan was to wrest control of the redistricting process from politicians.
    — Detroit Free Press, 22 Dec. 2022
  • As more special-interest dissidents wrest board seats via the new mix-and-match proxy voting card, there will be a period of painful adjustment for boards targeted by activists.
    — Peter R. Gleason, Fortune, 2 Mar. 2023
  • Trump on Friday also lodged insults again at Powell for not lowering interest rates, urging the central bank board to wrest control from him.
    — Alex Gangitano, The Hill, 1 Aug. 2025
  • Advertisement Embracing—or distancing themselves from—AI might be one way the parties seek to wrest control of this young voting bloc.
    — Nathan E. Sanders, Time, 4 Oct. 2025
  • For her part, Shiv’s secretly whispering in Matsson’s ear, angling to undermine her brothers and wrest away company control into her own hands.
    — Josh Wigler, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 May 2023
  • Baldoni countered by alleging that Lively used the harassment allegations as a pretext for her and Reynolds, her powerful movie star husband, to wrest control of the movie from him.
    — Martha Ross, Mercury News, 13 Dec. 2025
  • In 2005, a handful of libertarians attempted, with little success, to wrest control of the government.
    — Rachel Monroe, New Yorker, 21 Jan. 2026
  • Current efforts by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to wrest management of the wolf from the federal government may succeed.
    — Al Wolter, Outdoor Life, 10 Jan. 2025
  • The chairman alleged Sherman colluded with some board members to wrest control by making changes to the board’s composition by appointing two new directors without proper vetting by the nominations committee.
    — Jonathan Burgos, Forbes, 3 Mar. 2025
  • The Disney-DeSantis feud escalated over the last two months when the company effectively outmaneuvered the governor’s attempts to wrest control of the district away from it.
    — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 28 Apr. 2023
  • Israel says the foundation is the linchpin of a new aid system to wrest control from the United Nations, which Israel claims has been infiltrated by Hamas, and other humanitarian groups.
    — Arkansas Online, 22 June 2025
  • Despite their history of opposition, the First Families and the rebellion leaders reluctantly unite to wrest back control, bringing in the Jevani people—who are suspicious that they won’t be enslaved again when the dust settles.
    — Literary Hub, 1 Dec. 2025
  • From the early 1920s onward, however, as the industry solidified, Gibson and her peers discovered that the men running the Hollywood studios were ready to wrest control, profits and power for themselves.
    — Elizabeth Weitzman, Smithsonian Magazine, 24 Apr. 2023
  • Vargas furiously rushes to wrest remote control of the device from The Collective, which is only waiting until enough people are paying attention (via TV news report, social media and the like) to detonate.
    — Kimberly Roots, TVLine, 29 May 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'wrest.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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