adjective Theology.
- (especially of saints) experiencing religious ecstasy as a result of one’s faith.
noun
- ecstatic joy or delight; joyful ecstasy.
- Often raptures. an utterance or expression of ecstatic delight.
- the carrying of a person to another place or sphere of existence.
- the Rapture, Theology. the experience, anticipated by some fundamentalist Christians, of meeting Christ midway in the air upon his return to earth.
- Archaic. the act of carrying off.
verb (used with object), rap·tured, rap·tur·ing.
- to enrapture.
noun
- the state of mind resulting from feelings of high emotion; joyous ecstasy
- (often plural) an expression of ecstatic joy
- the act of transporting a person from one sphere of existence to another, esp from earth to heaven
verb
- (tr) archaic, or literary to entrance; enrapture
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).
1630s, from rapture (n.). Related: Raptured; rapturing.