 Though the sexual connotation is today dominant, the word "rape" can be used in a non-sexual context in literary English.In Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock", the title means "the theft of a lock [of hair]", exaggerating a trivial violation against a person.In the twentieth century, the classically trained J. R. R. Tolkien used the word with its old meaning of "seizing and taking away" in his "The Silmarillion".