August 10, 1999

mosh; mosh pit

In an artcle in the Indianapolis Star this week, women at the Woodstock concert accused men of "mosh pit rape." What kind of rape is that?

Mosh pit rape would be a rape that occurs in a mosh pit.

And a mosh pit is, of course, a place where moshing occurs.

To start at the beginning, then, moshing is a form of violent dancing similar to slam-dancing, typically performed to hardcore music at rock concerts. To mosh is to dance in such a manner; the noun mosh refers to the act or practice of dancing in such a manner.

A mosh pit is the place, typically in front of the stage, where people mosh at rock concerts. The pit in question is the same as an orchestra pit. In the Woodstock case, the women claimed to be raped in the mosh pit while a mosh was going on.

Some other terms are body surfing, or riding on the outstretched hands of people moshing (one of the women in the Woodstock case body-surfed out of the mosh pit after she was raped, since the crowd was too tightly packed to walk out), and stage diving, or jumping off the stage onto the outstretched hands of moshers.

The word mosh is first recorded in the mid-1980s. It is probably a variant of mash 'to crush'.