Etymology, English language use Emmett Stone Etymology, English language use Emmett Stone

2429: kidnap Aug 15, 2021

When kids nap, that's usually a good thing, but when kids are napped it's a cause for terror. This apparent discrepancy is pretty much accidental though, but not as random a compound as, say, 'butterfly'. The '-nap' in question is simply a variant of 'nab' as in 'take', but the 'kid' is not random either. While this term now is also used for the abduction of adults and children alike, in the 17th century a 'kidnapper' abducted children for servitude, often as laborers in the Americas.

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