Word for the Wise, August 29

[Uadzit]

Topic: Kidnap

A faraway listener wrote in to ask if kidnap has its origin in the idea—or the reality—of some long-ago abducted child (or kid) being put to sleep (a nap) by the perpetrator.

The short answer is no; the longer answer contains a bit of history. Back in the 17th century, kidnappers were thieves who seized people—often, but not exclusively children—to work as laborers in the North American colonies. The older term is kidnapper; the verb kidnap, which first appeared late in the 1600s, is a back-formation from that.

So what's the lexical story behind kidnapper? As our correspondent guessed, the kid in kidnap comes from the once-slangy kid naming the young. Napper, however, comes not from some sedation of the abductee but from the napper meaning "thief." A kidnapper steals kids; a catnapper steals cats; and a dognapper steals dogs. Napper is now obsolete, and the verb nap that inspired it—meaning "grab" or "nab"—is now chiefly dialectal and British.

Kidnapping adapted to the changing needs of language, and even after its original sense, "carrying off to enforced labor especially in the British colonies in America," became obsolete, it remained in the lexicon with meaning "seizing and detaining or carrying away by unlawful force or fraud, often with a demand for ransom."

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.  

[Flirty kisses of death]

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[chessiejo]

we used to call shoplifting "nipping"

which i guess is still pretty similar