rapture

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French rapture, from Latin raptūra, future active participle of rapiō (“snatch, carry off”).

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɹæpt͡ʃɚ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɹaptʃə/
• (New Zealand) IPA^(key): /ˈɹɛptʃɘ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æptʃə(ɹ)

Noun

rapture (countable and uncountable, plural raptures)

1. Extreme pleasure, happiness or excitement.
   • 1712 June 25 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “SATURDAY, June 14, 1712”, in The Spectator, number 407; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume IV, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC:

     Music, when thus applied, raises noble hints in the mind of the hearer, and fills it with great conceptions. It strengthens devotion, and advances praise into rapture […]

     The spelling has been modernized.

   • 2014 October 18, Paul Doyle, “Southampton hammer eight past hapless Sunderland in barmy encounter”, in The Guardian:

     Sunderland’s right-back, Santiago Vergini, inadvertently gave Southampton the lead by lashing the ball into his own net in the 12th minute, and that signalled the start of a barmy encounter that had home fans in raptures and Sunderland in tatters.

   • 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter VII, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:

     My heart filled with rapture then, and it fills now as it has each of the countless times I have recalled those dear words, as it shall fill always until death has claimed me. I may never see her again; she may not know how I love her--she may question, she may doubt; but always true and steady, and warm with the fires of love my heart beats for the girl who said that night: "I love you beyond all conception."

2. In some forms of fundamentalist Protestant eschatology, the event when Jesus returns and gathers the souls of living and deceased believers. (Usually "the rapture".)
3. (obsolete) The act of kidnapping or abducting, especially the forceful carrying off of a woman.
4. (obsolete) Rape; ravishment; sexual violation.
5. (obsolete) The act of carrying, conveying, transporting or sweeping along by force of movement; the force of such movement; the fact of being carried along by such movement.
   • 1614–1615, Homer, “(please specify the book number)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., Homer’s Odysses. […], London: […] Rich[ard] Field [and William Jaggard], for Nathaniell Butter, published 1615, →OCLC; republished in The Odysseys of Homer, […], volume (please specify the book number), London: John Russell Smith, […], 1857, →OCLC:

     That 'gainst a rock, or flat, her keel did dash / With headlong rapture.

     The spelling has been modernized.

   • 1888, James Russell Lowell, Agassiz, 6.1.21:

     With the rapture of great winds to blow / About earth's shaken coignes.

6. A spasm; a fit; a syncope; delirium.
   • c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:

     Your pratling nurse
     Into a rapture lets her baby cry

Verb

rapture (third-person singular simple present raptures, present participle rapturing, simple past and past participle raptured)

1. (dated, transitive) To cause to experience great happiness or excitement.
   • 2012, The Books They Gave Me: True Stories of Life, Love, and Lit, page 138:

     She raptured me in summer by giving me Fitzgerald's flawed and gorgeous masterpiece, the book that held his tortured heart.

2. (dated, intransitive) To experience great happiness or excitement.
3. (transitive) To take (someone) off the Earth and bring (them) to Heaven as part of the Rapture.
   • 2001, Allan Appel, Club Revelation: A Novel, page 320:

     "If she's raptured," Ellen said to them on the fifth night after Marylee's disappearance, as they sat on the roof of the building on their old beanbags and rusting garden furniture hauled up from the Museum, "if that's what happened to her, then […] "

   • 2007, Leon L. Combs, A Search For Reality‎, page 46:

     These fiction books told the story of some church people who were raptured but focused on the people who were not raptured.

   • 2010, Gerald Mizejewski, Jerimiah Asher, Charting the Supernatural Judgements of Planet Earth, page 233:

     The third person raptured by God into heaven was Elijah […]

   • 2011, Lexi George, Demon Hunting in Dixie, →ISBN:

     “Praise the Lord, he's been raptured.” Good grief. “I don't think so, Mrs. Farris. 'Course, I'm Episcopalian, and I'm pretty sure we don't get raptured. But, Baptists get raptured, don't they?”

4. (rare, intransitive) To take part in the Rapture; to leave Earth and go to Heaven as part of the Rapture.
5. (uncommon) To state (something, transitive) or talk (intransitive) rapturously.
   • 1885, Edward Everett Hale, G.T.T.; or, The Wonderful Adventures of a Pullman, page 158:

     And then the flowers! May-day indeed. Hester had been in Switzerland at the end of June, years on years before, and often had she raptured to Effie about the day's ride, in which they collected a hundred varieties of flowers, most of them new to them.

   • 2003, Jessica Peers, Asparagus Dreams, page 75:

     Pulling her leggings down over unshaven legs, she raptured "I'm dry!" to her audience.

   • 2003, Beverly Adam, Irish Magic, page 121:

     They're called angora with wonderfully long, soft fleece,” she raptured on about her first venture.

Anagrams

• parture

Participle

raptūre

1. vocative masculine singular of raptūrus