Etymology - Rage

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That our rage to tell and retell must be balanced by – even overreached by – our responsibility to listen, study and learn. Barre Toelken

A word worth exploring, since I read the sentence, wondered if it was a typo for race then reread and realised that it wasn't, and was intended specifically.

Entered English from Middle French, it's most common usage in English, even from the early 14^th century onwards is the one we know today, of a “violent anger, often expressed in look or action”. Instances of its use are recorded first for people, and natures' forces such as wind and sea, and then towards the end of the same century for animals. It reminds me of that other French to English crossover word terrible because it can describe states that are different, even opposing. Although now archaic, any Shakespeare educated English speaker would understand rage to sometimes mean madness and might even have an awareness that it sometime(s) referred to foolishness or melancholy.

It is interesting that the use of it relating to rabid dogs is recorded in the Middle French, otherwise I might have thought that a later addition. The online etymology site notes that in Welsh and Breton the word is a compound built on the word for dog.

The usage of the above sentence – as a violent passion - exists in English from the end of the 14^th Century, and is not listed as archaic, though I think perhaps it is becoming so which makes it stand out all the more.

A telling choice of words from Tolkeon, because it carries with it some of the other meanings as threats and portents – not least that of folly.