rapture

noun

1. ecstatic joy or delight; joyful ecstasy.
2. Often raptures. an utterance or expression of ecstatic delight.
3. the carrying of a person to another place or sphere of existence.
4. the Rapture, Theology. the experience, anticipated by some fundamentalist Christians, of meeting Christ midway in the air upon his return to earth.
5. Archaic. the act of carrying off.

verb (used with object), rap·tured, rap·tur·ing.

6. to enrapture.

noun

1. the state of mind resulting from feelings of high emotion; joyous ecstasy
2. (often plural) an expression of ecstatic joy
3. the act of transporting a person from one sphere of existence to another, esp from earth to heaven

verb

4. (tr) archaic, or literary to entrance; enrapture

n.

c.1600, “act of carrying off,” from Middle French rapture, from Medieval Latin raptura “seizure, rape, kidnapping,” from Latin raptus “a carrying off, abduction, snatching away; rape” (see rapt). Earliest attested use in English is of women and in 17c. it sometimes meant rape (v.), which word is a cognate of this. Sense of “spiritual ecstasy, state of mental transport” first recorded c.1600 (raptures).

v.

1630s, from rapture (n.). Related: Raptured; rapturing.