rape

• IPA^(key): /ɹeɪp/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪp

From Middle English rapen, rappen (“to abduct; ravish; seduce; rape; seize; snatch; carry off; transport”), probably from Latin rapere (verb), possibly through or influenced by Anglo-Norman rap, rape (noun) (compare also ravish). But compare Swedish rappa (“to snatch, seize, carry off”), Low German rapen (“to snatch, seize”), Dutch rapen (“to pick up, gather, collect”); the relationship with Germanic forms is not clear. Cognate with Lithuanian reikėti (“to be in need”). Compare also rap (“seize, snatch”).^[1] Further, some senses may be from Etymology 3, an Old Norse word.

rape (countable and uncountable, plural rapes)

1. 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. [from 15th c.]
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]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; […]

   • For quotations using this term, see Citations:rape.
2. (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.
   1. Overpowerment; utter defeat.
   2. (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.

3. (now rare) The taking of something by force; seizure, plunder. [from early 14th c.]

   the Rape of Nanking

   • 1638, George Sandys, chapter XXII, in A Paraphrase upon Job:

     Ruin'd orphans of thy rapes complain.

   • 1712, Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock:
   • 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.

   • 1974, Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur or The Prince of Darkness: A Novel, London: Faber and Faber, →ISBN; republished in The Avignon Quintet: Monsieur, Livia, Constance, Sebastian, Quinx, London: Faber and Faber, 1992, →ISBN, page 23:

     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; […]

   • 1977, JRR Tolkien, The Silmarillion:

     Few of the Teleri were willing to go forth to war, for they remembered the slaying at the Swanhaven, and the rape of their ships.

4. (now archaic) The abduction of a woman, especially for sexual purposes. [from 15th c.]
   • c. 1588–1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:

     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?

   • 2000 September 8, Mary Beard, The Guardian:

     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.

5. (obsolete) That which is snatched away.
   • 1636, G[eorge] 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: [Andrew Hebb […]], →OCLC:

     Where now are all my hopes? O, never more. / Shall they revive! nor death her rapes restore.

6. (obsolete) Movement, as in snatching; haste; hurry.

In legal contexts, the definition of the crime of rape can have a significantly narrower scope than in common modern parlance.^[2][3]

rape (third-person singular simple present rapes, present participle raping, simple past and past participle raped)

1. (chiefly transitive) To force sexual intercourse or other sexual activity upon (someone) without their consent. [from 16th c.]
   • 2012 August 21, Ed Pilkington, “Death penalty on trial: should Reggie Clemons live or die?”, in The Guardian‎^[6]:

     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.
2. (transitive, intransitive) To seize by force. (Now often with sexual overtones.) [from late 14th c.]
   • 1978, Gore Vidal, Kalki:

     Dr Ashok's eyes had a tendency to pop whenever he wanted to rape your attention.

   • 1983, Alasdair Gray, “Logopandocy”, in Every Short Story 1951-2012, Canongate, published 2012, page 136:

     It is six years since my just action to reclaim the armaments raped from here by the Lairds of Dalgetty and Tolly […] .

3. (transitive) To carry (someone, especially a woman) off against their will, especially for sex; to abduct. [from 15th c.]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto X”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     Paridell rapeth Hellenore:
     Malbecco her pursewes:
     Findes emongst Satyres, whence with him
     To turne she doth refuse.

   • 1718, Homer, translated by Alexander Pope, The Iliad:

     A Princess rap’d transcends a Navy storm'd.

4. (transitive) To plunder, to destroy or despoil. [from 17th c.]
   • 1892, Rudyard Kipling, Barrack-Room Ballads:

     I raped your richest roadstead—I plundered Singapore!

   • 1996, Stephen King, Desperation:

     They come out here in their perky little foreign cars, fifty pounds of American copper in each one, and tell us we're earth-raping monsters.

   • 2018, Power Trip, Armageddon Blues:

     We've raped the land for power and possession / Two thousand years and all we'll have is a planetary toxic deathbed

5. (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.

   1. To overpower, destroy (someone); to trounce. [from 20th c.]

      My experienced opponent will rape me at chess.

   2. To exploit an advantage, often involving money, where the other person has little choice but to submit.

      Have you seen the prices in that store lately? I got raped for $20 just buying a sandwich.

• (seize): theft, thievery
• (force sexual intercourse): ravish, violate, vitiate (uncommon)
• (abuse): plunder, despoil

• butt-rape
• corrective rape
• frape
• I've been raped
• rapable, rapeable
• rapist
• rerape

• rape on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Generally considered to derive from Old English rāp (“rope”), in reference to the ropes used to delineate the courts that ruled each rape.^[4] Compare Dutch reep and the parish of Rope, Cheshire.

In the 18th century, Edward Lye proposed derivation from Old Norse hreppr (“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 French raper (“take by force”).^[5]

See Wikipedia for more.

rape (plural rapes)

1. (now historical) One of the six former administrative divisions of Sussex, England. [from 11th c.]
   • 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.

• hundred
• wapentake

• Rape (county subdivision) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

From Middle English rapen, from Old Norse hrapa (“to fall, rush headlong, hurry, hasten”), from Proto-Germanic *hrapaną (“to fall down”). Cognate with Norwegian rapa (“to slip, fall”), Danish rappe (“to make haste”), German rappeln (“to hasten, hurry”).

rape (third-person singular simple present rapes, present participle raping, simple past and past participle raped)

1. (obsolete, intransitive or reflexive) To make haste; to hasten or hurry. [14th–16th c.]

rape (plural rapes)

1. (obsolete) Haste; precipitancy; a precipitate course. [14th–17th c.]

rape (comparative more rape, superlative most rape)

1. (obsolete) Quickly; hastily. [14th–19th c.]

From Middle English rape, from Latin rāpa, from rāpum (“turnip”).

rape (plural rape)

1. Synonym of rapeseed, Brassica napus. [late 14th c.]
   • 2001, Bill Lambrecht, Dinner at the New Gene Café, page 231:

     After the Industrial Revolution, it was discovered that rape also yields oil suitable for lubrication.

From Middle English rape, from rape (“grape stalk, rasper”), from Old French raper, rasper (“to rasp, scratch”), from Old Frankish *raspōn (“to scratch”), related to Old High German raspōn (“to scrape”), Old English ġehrespan (“to strip, spoil”).

rape (countable and uncountable, plural rapes)

1. The stalks and husks of grapes from which the must has been expressed in winemaking.
2. A filter containing the stalks and husks of grapes, used for clarifying wine, vinegar, etc.
3. (obsolete) Fruit plucked in a bunch.

   a rape of grapes

   • 1682, John Ray, Methodus Plantarum Nova:

     rape of Cistus

   • 1971, Bulletin of the European Communities:

     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 […]

• Earp, Pera, aper, pare, pear, prae-, præ-, reap

rape

1. plural of raap

• IPA^(key): /ˈraː.pə/

• Audio:

  (file)

rape

1. (dated or formal) singular present subjunctive of rapen

• pare

rape

1. inflection of rapar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

• IPA^(key): /ɾa.ˈpe/

rape

1. dependent form of tape

• IPA^(key): /ɣape/

From French râper.

rape

1. to grate (ice)

From French happer.

rape

1. to snatch, seize, nab

• Targète, Jean and Urciolo, Raphael G. Haitian Creole-English dictionary (1993; →ISBN)

• IPA^(key): /ˈra.pe/
• Rhymes: -ape
• Hyphenation: rà‧pe

rape f

1. plural of rapa

• apre, arpe, pare, pera

rape

1. second-person singular present active imperative of rapiō

rape

1. haste; hurry
   • c. 1390, Geoffrey Chaucer, Wordes Unto Adam:

     So ofte a-daye I mot thy werk renewe, It to correcte and eek to rubbe and scrape; And al is thorugh thy negligence and rape.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Imitative, related to Old Norse ropa. Compare Danish ræbe, Icelandic ropa.

rape (imperative rap, present tense raper, simple past rapa or rapet or rapte, past participle rapa or rapet or rapt, present participle rapende)

1. To belch or burp.

• “rape” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

rāpe

1. dative singular of rāp

• Hyphenation: ra‧pe
• Rhymes: -api, -apɨ

rape

1. inflection of rapar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

• IPA^(key): /ˈrape/ [ˈra.pe]
• Rhymes: -ape
• Syllabification: ra‧pe

Borrowed from Catalan rap (“monkfish”), possibly from Latin rāpum (“turnip”).

rape m (plural rapes)

1. monkfish

   Synonym: pejesapo

Deverbal from rapar.

rape m (plural rapes)

1. shaving, hair crop

rape

1. inflection of rapar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

• “rape”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.7, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2023 November 28

• rapé
• pera
• pare
• paré