fate worse than death, a

Seduction or rape of a woman. This term, orig- inating about the mid-seventeenth century, became a cliché in the late nine- teenth century, when it also began to be used in a jocular fashion for sexual relations among willing partners. E. R. Burroughs, however, still meant it seriously: “The ape . . . bearing Jane Porter away toward a fate a thousand times worse than death” (Tarzan, 1917).