From the Inventor of the Detective Mystery: "Rapine"

Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins celebrates his 188th birthday this week. A friend of Charles Dickens and widely thought to be the father of the modern detective story, Collins left behind four novels of distinction, including his 1868 best seller The Moonstone, the suspenseful tale of a unique yellow diamond stolen from a secret order of Hindu priests and brought to England. In the novel's opening pages, Collins uses the unusual rapine when he writes: 

One age followed another—and still, generation after generation, the successors of the three Brahmins watched their priceless Moonstone, night and day. One age followed another until the first years of the eighteenth Christian century saw the reign of Aurungzebe, Emperor of the Moguls. At his command havoc and rapine were let loose once more among the temples of the worship of Brahmah. The shrine of the four-handed god was polluted by the slaughter of sacred animals; the images of the deities were broken in pieces; and the Moonstone was seized by an officer of rank in the army of Aurungzebe.

Rapine is a literary term meaning "plunder or pillage," and refers to the looting and destruction that commonly occur during or right after a battle. It's not a word you see that much today, but for anyone reading The Moonstone — which nearly 150 years after its initial publication is still fresh and fun — rapine is a good word to have under your belt. Especially considering the light Collins's tale of rapine-derived troubles sheds on the imperial, rapine-filled, British-Indian imperial relationship. 

Heard anyone use rapine recently? Let us know by leaving a comment below. And language lovers dipping into Collins's novel should keep their eyes peeled for his use of cool.

"May I venture to suggest—if nothing was said about me beforehand—that I might see her here?"
"Cool!" said Mr. Bruff.

In the 1860s the word had not yet come to mean "smooth" or "good" as it does today. It meant "audacious" or "impertinent," as Vocabulary.com lexicographer Ben Zimmer explains in a New York Times On Language column here. In other words, Mr. Bruff was using cool to say "no," not "yes," as we'd understand his meaning today.