rapture

See also Rapture

English

Etymology

Latin raptūra, future active participle of rapiō (“snatch, carry off”)

Pronunciation

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Noun

rapture (plural raptures)

1. Extreme pleasure, happiness or excitement.
   • 1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Land That Time Forgot Chapter VII

     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 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.
   • 1888 James Russell Lowell, Agassiz 6.1.21:

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

See also

• Rapture on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Translations

the rapture (gathering up of believers in end times)

• Greek αναρπαγή (el) (anarpagi)

References

• Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, 1989

Verb

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

1. (dated, intransitive) to experience great happiness or excitement
2. (dated, transitive) to cause to experience great happiness or excitement
3. (rare) to take part in the Rapture

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Latin

Participle

raptūre

1. vocative masculine singular of raptūrus