Rage Meaning
/ɹeɪd͡ʒ/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounViolent uncontrolled anger.
nounA current fashion or fad.
Sentence Examples
The Sphinx howled with rage.
The child is helpless in his rage.
His face was dark with rage.
CEFR Practice Quiz
He felt a sudden ____ when his phone was stolen in the crowd.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The driver's ____ at being cut off in traffic led to a dangerous confrontation on the motorway.
Word Origin & History
Etymology tree Classical Latin rabiō Proto-Italic *-jēs Classical Latin -iēs Classical Latin rabiēs Late Latin rabia Anglo-Norman ragebor. Middle English rage English rage From Middle English rage, from Anglo-Norman rage, from Late Latin rabia, from Classical Latin rabiēs (“anger, fury”). Doublet of rabies. Displaced native Middle English wode, from Old English wōd ("madness, fury, rage"; compare Modern dialectal English wood (“mad, insane, furious, raging”)); and Middle English hotherte (“anger”), from Old English hātheort (“fury, anger, wrath, rage”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, / Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman ſcorn'd."
— 1697, [William] Congreve, The Mourning Bride, a Tragedy. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC, Act III, page 39:
"They burned the old gun that used to stand in the dark corner up in the garret, close to the stuffed fox that always grinned so fiercely. Perhaps the reason why he seemed in such a ghastly rage was that he did not come by his death fairly. Otherwise his pelt would not have been so perfect. And why else was he put away up there out of sight?—and so magnificent a brush as he had too."
— 1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter 1, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC:
"[…] rage is not only impotent by definition, it is the mode in which impotence becomes active in its last stage of final despair."
— 1963, Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, →ISBN, page 101:
"But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action."
— 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”, in Essays: First Series:
"Here and there were certain unmistakable derniers cris, some of them undoubtedly destined - had the world pursued its expected course - to become the rage of tomorrow; others, I would say, a dead loss from their very inception."
— 1951, John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, published 1954, page 82:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
He felt a sudden ____ when his phone was stolen in the crowd.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The driver's ____ at being cut off in traffic led to a dangerous confrontation on the motorway.