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From Middle Englishrapen, rappen(“to abduct; ravish; seduce; rape; seize; snatch; carry off; transport”), probably from Latinrapere (verb), possibly through or influenced by Anglo-Normanrap, rape (noun) (compare also ravish). But compare Swedishrappa(“to snatch, seize, carry off”), Low Germanrapen(“to snatch, seize”), Dutchrapen(“to pick up, gather, collect”); the relationship with Germanic forms is not clear. Cognate with Lithuanianreikėti(“to be in need”). Compare also rap(“seize, snatch”).[1] Further, some senses may be from Etymology 3, an Old Norse word.
The act of forcing sex upon another person without their consent or against their will; originally coitus forced by a man on a woman, but now generally any sex act forced by any person upon another person; by extension, any non-consensual sex act forced on or perpetrated by any being.
1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost., London: [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker; nd by Robert Boulter; nd Matthias Walker,, →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books:, London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1873, →OCLC:
I fled; but he pursued (though more, it seems, Inflamed with lust than rage), and, swifter far, Me overtook, his mother, all dismayed, And, in embraces forcible and foul Engendering with me, of that rape begot These yelling monsters […]
1990 January 22, ‘Turning Victims into Saints’, Time:
Last April the media world exploded in indignation at the rape and beating of a jogger in Central Park.
2013, William Butler Yeats, The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume XIII: A Vision: The Original 1925 Version, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN:
Castor and Pollux are one set of twins birthed by Leda after her rape by Zeus in swan form; […]
(slang, sometimes offensive) An experience that is pleasant for one party and unpleasant for the other, particularly when the unwilling partner's suffering is worse than necessary.
Overpowerment; utter defeat.
(Can we clean up(+) this sense?) An insult to one's senses so severe that one feels that they cannot ever be the same afterwards.
The ear rape of that concert was so bad I can't even listen to their songs at work anymore.
1959, Dorothy Parker, “Ellery Queen: The New York Murders”, in The Portable Dorothy Parker, New York: Penguin, published 1976, pages 566–8:
Ellery Queen deals entirely in murders; you are not fobbed off, as you are with Mr. Leslie Charteris's Saint, with pablum about the rape of the dowager's emeralds, or the theft of the blueprint of the newest submarine.
She worked under the great tapestry with its glowing but subdued tones—huntsmen with lofted horns had been running down a female stag. After the rape, leaving the grooms to bring the trophy home, they galloped away into the soft brumous Italian skyline; […]
Sat. Traytor, if Rome haue law, or we haue power, Thou and thy Faction shall repent this Rape. Bass.Rape call you it my Lord, to cease my owne, My true betrothed Loue, and now my wife?
The tale of the rape of Lucretia, for example, is hardly tellable - as many Roman writers themselves discovered - without raising the question of where seduction ends and rape begins; the rape of the Sabines puts a similar question mark over the distinction between rape and marriage.
1636, G S[andys], “(please specify the page)”, in A Paraphrase upon the Psalmes of David. And upon the Hymnes Dispersed throughout the Old and New Testaments, London: ], →OCLC:
Where now are all my hopes? O, never more. / Shall they revive! nor death her rapes restore.
(obsolete) Movement, as in snatching; haste; hurry.
Usage notes
In legal contexts, the definition of the crime of rape can have a significantly narrower scope than in common modern parlance.[2][3]
2012 August 21, Ed Pilkington, “Death penalty on trial: should Reggie Clemons live or die?”, in The Guardian:
The prosecution case was that the men forced the sisters to strip, threw their clothes over the bridge, then raped them and participated in forcing them to jump into the river to their deaths. As he walked off the bridge, Clemons was alleged to have said: "We threw them off. Let's go."
2007, Kunda: The Story of a Child Soldier, →ISBN, page 51:
"They taught us nothing but how to cheat, curse and abuse. I never killed in cold blood even if I was known as one of the most fearless fighters. Yes, I abducted several children, I robbed and beat, but I never raped."
For more quotations using this term, see Citations:rape.
We've raped the land for power and possession / Two thousand years and all we'll have is a planetary toxic deathbed
(men's slang, sometimes offensive) To subject (another person) to a painful or unfair experience.
2018 January 2, Samantha D. Gottlieb, “8. Mothers and Gardasil”, in Not Quite a Cancer Vaccine. Selling HPV and Cervical Cancer, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 121:
I attended, the mothers went around the circle, introducing themselves. They added a brief statement about their own experiences with vaccine for the reporter’s benefit. Dionne said that she felt “raped” when she was forced to give Tate some vaccinations.
Generally considered to derive from Old Englishrāp(“rope”), in reference to the ropes used to delineate the courts that ruled each rape.[4] Compare Dutchreep and the parish of Rope, Cheshire.
In the 18th century, Edward Lye proposed derivation from Old Norsehreppr(“tract of land”), but this was rejected by the New English Dictionary and is considered "phonologically impossible" by the English Place-Name Society.[4] Others, considering it improbable that the Normans would have adopted a local word, suggest derivation from Old Frenchraper(“take by force”).[5]
1888 March 20, Henry H. Howorth, in a letter to The Archaeological Review, volume 1 (March–August 1888), page 230:
It seems to me very clear that the rapes of Sussex were divisions already existing there when the Normans landed.
1971, Frank Merry Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England:
There is little, if any, doubt that the division of Sussex into six rapes had been carried out before the Conquest, though the term is not mentioned in any Old English record.
1997, Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest, page 18:
These four castles dominated the Sussex rapes named after them; the fifth rape, Bramber, held by William de Braose, was in existence by 1084.
With regard to this obligation, the Council, on 26 October 1971[,] also arranged for certain producers to be totally or partially exempted from it, either because their wine production is very low (less than 50 hectolitres in one marketing year), or because they deliver their rapes of grapes to oenological merchants, or because they make quality wines […]
↑ 4.04.1Mawer, Allen, F. M. Stenton with J. E. B. Gover (1929, 1930) Sussex - Part I and Part II, English Place-Name Society
^ “Origin of the Sussex 'Rapes'”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), Sussex Castles, 2015 January 21 (last accessed), archived from the original on 19 April 2019