Discover

Originally, the word '''rape''' was akin to ''rapine'', ''rapture'', ''raptor'', and ''rapacious'', and referred to the more general violations, such as looting, destruction, and capture of citizens that are inflicted upon a town or country during war, eg. the Rape of Nanking. Today, some dictionaries still define ''rape'' to include any serious and destructive assault against a person or community.
English ''rape'' was in use since the 14th century in the general sense of "seize prey, take by force," from ''raper'', an Old French legal term for "to seize", in turn from Latin ''rapere'' "seize, carry off by force, abduct". The Latin term was also used for sexual violation, but only very rarely. The legendary event known as the "Rape of the Sabine Women", while ultimately motivated sexually, did not entail sexual violation of the Sabine women on the spot, who were rather abducted, and then implored by the Romans to marry them (as opposed to striking a deal with their fathers or brothers first, as would have been required by law).
Though the sexual connotation is today dominant, the word "rape" can be used in non-sexual context in literary English. In "the rape of the Silmarils" in J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Silmarillion", the word "rape" is used with its old meaning of "seizing and taking away".
In Alexander Pope's ''The Rape of the Lock'', the word "rape" is used hyperbolically, exaggerating a trivial violation against a person. Compare also the adjective ''rapacious'' which retains the generic meaning.
Sometimes, the word ''rape'' is used colloquially to dysphemistically describe forms of non-sexual unwelcome conduct ("My team got raped on the field yesterday"), or metaphorically as in "the rape of the Earth" referring to environmental destruction, possibly implying a female gender of the Earth (Gaia). Other than in literary usage discussed above, this use of the term is unrelated to the original sense of "abduction" or "carrying off" and implies a comparison with sexual violation. In "The Rape of Nanking" actual mass rape and mass murder is summarized by naming the city as the object of the rape.

Contents

Other meanings

Other meanings

Rape is also a type of plant, ''Brassica napus'', from the mustard family. Its leaves are used to feed livestock and its seeds yield rape oil.

Rape is also "the residue of grapes, after the juice has been extracted, used as a filter in making vinegar." [1]


The word "rape" is sometimes used in the hacker slang to denote a sudden burst of overload on a web site or server, which results in the site being taken down. A synonym of this use of the word is "hammering" the site.
Within the video game community (notably within the Counter-Strike culture), the term "rape" or "raped" is often used to describe the total domination of one individual or team by another. Often considered derogatory, this term is seldomly used as the occurrence of total domination by one team over another is rare.