See also: Rapture

English

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Etymology

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

Pronunciation

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Noun

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rapture (countable and uncountable, plural raptures)

  1. Extreme pleasure, happiness or excitement.
  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.
  6. A spasm; a fit; a syncope; delirium.

Derived terms

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Translations

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References

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Verb

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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[1], 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

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Latin

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Participle

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raptūre

  1. vocative masculine singular of raptūrus