Timeline for What is the meaning of the English word “ravished” in this sentence, violated or transfixed?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 6, 2021 at 3:42 | vote | accept | José Marín | ||
| Jul 5, 2021 at 17:00 | comment | added | Lambie | See what I mean? The results are clear: Only one title is remotely relevant. Crime and Ravishment (A literary usage); and everything else goes back pretty far. google.com/… | |
| Jul 5, 2021 at 16:58 | comment | added | Lambie | Googling in Google books is one thing; ploughing through the uses is another. | |
| Jul 5, 2021 at 16:57 | comment | added | terdon | I know you can't since if you had done so (it took me less than five minutes on Google Books) you wouldn't be trying to convince us of something that is clearly wrong. But hey, you do you. | |
| Jul 5, 2021 at 16:56 | comment | added | Lambie | @terdon It is getting slightly tiresome to be told that ravished means raped. In today's world, it simply is not used as a euphemism for rape or to mean rape in contemporary writing. Of course, in the 18th century it could have used like that, say, in Fanny Hill and similar books. Now, can you find it in historical fiction? Probably. Sure. But please, dig through the corpora. I can't be bothered. | |
| Jul 5, 2021 at 16:47 | comment | added | terdon | @Lambie It could also mean that they had roses plaited into their hair. However, it doesn't, because that isn't what the word means. And since no dictionary I can see considers it "archaic", you have offered no reference to back your claim and the claim is trivially proven wrong by a cursory check on any corpus, it might make sense to remove the claim instead of arguing. But, as you so politely put it, "whatever". | |
| Jul 5, 2021 at 16:43 | comment | added | Lambie | @terdon Whatever. It could mean they were carried off violently. With the raping coming later. | |
| Jul 5, 2021 at 14:57 | comment | added | terdon | If I were to read a passage describing Vikings raiding a coastal village and ravishing the local women, I would immediately understand that they were violently forced, raped. This isn't remotely archaic and would be unremarkable in a contemporary historical novel or an actual history book. | |
| Jul 4, 2021 at 17:13 | comment | added | nick012000 | I suppose that depends on how you define "literal rape", but sure. | |
| Jul 4, 2021 at 17:09 | comment | added | Lambie | en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_fantasy ravishment is not literal rape anymore. | |
| Jul 4, 2021 at 17:07 | comment | added | nick012000 | "Bodice-ripper" stories about sexy men ravishing the novel's heroine are the most popular genre of erotic fiction, bar none. 50 Shades of Gray was a best-seller for a reason. Obviously, real rape is bad, but pretend fantasy rape is different. | |
| Jul 4, 2021 at 17:05 | comment | added | Lambie | @nick012000 "He ravished her", does not mean she wanted it. I doubt, even in erotic fiction, that a woman would say that. That might be an imputation by an author. In any case, it is irrelevant here. | |
| Jul 4, 2021 at 17:01 | comment | added | nick012000 | "Only the archaic meaning is "raped"" The use of "ravished" to mean "raped" isn't archaic at all; it's pretty commonly used in erotic fiction, for instance, where it'd often have a connotation like "raped/physically forced to have sex, but she enjoyed it because she secretly wanted it". | |
| Jul 4, 2021 at 15:40 | history | edited | Lambie | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 74 characters in body
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| Jul 4, 2021 at 15:33 | history | answered | Lambie | CC BY-SA 4.0 |