student asking question

What is the difference of "wreck" and "ruin"?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

To "ruin" something means to cause damage to it or cause it to stop working. To "wreck" is a little bit more extreme than to "ruin", and means to completely destroy something in a severely violent way. Ex: The cancelation ruined my plans. Ex: The crash wrecked my car. In these examples, you can see that "wreck" is more violent and physically damaging than "ruin". To "wreck" in this case means that there was a lot of physical damage done, while "ruin" here just refers to the plans not working out.

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