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No, it's not true. It's an amusing coincidence that separating parts of the word "therapist" creates the words "the rapist", however, the two have nothing to do with each other.

Therapist is derived from therapy plus "ist", which is a suffix meaning a person who is concerned with or practices the word that proceeded the suffix. Therefore, a therapist practices therapy.

It should also be noted that "therapist" is a newer spelling of "therapeutist". The new spelling has been around since roughly the 1880s.

So there is no confusion on the word "therapy", too, as it has "rap(e)" in it as well, the word "therapy" has its roots in the word "therapeia", which is Greek for "curing, or healing", and having nothing to do with the word "rape".

The verb "rape" is derived from the Anglo-French legal term "raper", which meant to "abduct, or seize". That derived from the Latin word "rapere", which meant to "seize, abduct, carry off by force". Essentially, it was a term that usually meant that a person stole something. Very rarely, rapere was used to mean "sexual violation", but the usual Latin word for that was stuprum, which literally meant "disgrace."

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Q: Is is true that the word 'therapist' derives from a combination of 'the rapist'?
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