means A wreck is something violently destroyed or ruined — a crashed ship, a smashed car, a collapsed plan, or a person worn down to the brink.

from From Old Norse 'wrek,' meaning something driven ashore — flotsam, debris, the leavings of the sea after it has had its way. It came into English through the Anglo-Norman 'wrec,' and it's a cousin of 'wreak' and 'wretch,' all rooted in an old Germanic sense of driving, expelling, or being cast out. So the original wreck wasn't the crash itself but the wreckage washed up afterward — the proof, lying on the sand, that the water won.