Okay, so I looked a little further into this.
First, googling "wreck havoc" yields countless examples, including many
by seemingly professional writers. So, irrespective of its "correctness"
it is definitely in the lexicon.
Second, my dictionary, Websters New Collegiate 1981, allows "wreck
havoc" and "wreak havoc" as equivalent alternative readings. (The entry
for "wreck" references that for "wreak".)
I wish I could have found a compelling literary reference, but I could
not. I did find an entry at this website:
http://www.word-detective.com/112897.html
While I would never necessarily accept the word of "word-detective.com"
as the last, it makes some interesting claims of acute relevance: A)
Both "wreck" and "wreak" derive from the same Norwegian word, "rek", and
in this context ("havoc") may be used interchangeably. B) The past tense
of "wreak" is "wreaked". By contrast, "wrought" is the archaic past
tense of "work".
These claims might be worth checking further before getting too annoyed
with either "wreck havoc" or "wreaked havoc".
Christopher Smith wrote:
On Oct 22, 2005, at 4:47 PM, Robert Patterson wrote:
While the spacing may really have reeked, and havoc may actually have
been wrought, the saying in this case is usually, "wreck havoc", for
which I sfaik the correct past tense is "wrecked havoc".
While I easily found dictionary entries for "wreak havoc", "play havoc"
and "cry havoc", I didn't find one for "wreck havoc." In fact, given the
definition of havoc (mayhem, destruction, etc.) the expression "wreck
havoc" doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Do you have any citations?
Christopher
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Robert Patterson
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