Monday, April 21, 2014

A-to-Z Challenge: Rave

I think this is the point where we’re officially leaving the middle and entering the end of the 2014 A-to-Z Challenge. Yay?


Okay, rave time.

Not that kind of rave. Put down the glow sticks.

Rave first showed up in the early fourteenth century as a word for someone showing signs of madness. It comes from the Old French raver, a variant of resver, which means either to dream or to be crazy. Before that, no one knows where it came from. Though it seems like they would fit together, ravage is not related to rave. Ravage comes from the Old French word ravage, destruction, and ravir, to take away. There’s also ravish, which comes from ravir as well, as does the word rapid, meaning rave is quite alone in the etymological word.

Sources
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

13 comments:

  1. Hi JE - interesting to see that 'Rave' as used in early medieval days described a type of craziness or madness.

    Then the other variants .. fascinating .. cheers Hilary

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  2. Signs of madness, like a raving lunatic.

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  3. I'm a raving lunatic. :)

    I also want to rave about your blog.

    T

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  4. *puts down glow stick*

    Dang it ... :)

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  5. I love word etymology. So interesting!

    Hope you are enjoying the A to Z challenge! Here’s my A to Z Post on Memorable Characters

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  6. This makes me wonder whether "rave" could possibly be related to "rove," in the sense of wandering or going astray. What think you?

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  7. Raving is a sign of madness, methinks....

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  8. What, no loud music? No glow sticks? *sigh*

    Actually, seeing rave as madness isn't too surprising. I've read a lot of books dealing with the Medieval time period and later and I've seen it used that way.

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  9. Well, in another form, rave as raving is so often used to describe a lunatic.

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  10. Rave is an orphan word, huh? Strange. I WOULD think it was related to ravage and ravish.

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  11. And I was in the mood to party...

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  12. I thought it might have been related to the other rav words, but I'm wrong.

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  13. Never thought rave had to anything with craziness! Interesting!

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Please validate me.