rapture

Meanings

Noun

• Extreme pleasure, happiness or excitement.
• In some forms of fundamentalist Protestant eschatology, the event when Jesus returns and gathers the souls of living believers. (Usually "the rapture".)
• The act of kidnapping or abducting, especially the forceful carrying off of a woman.
• Rape; ravishment; sexual violation.
• 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.
• A spasm; a fit; a syncope; delirium.

Verb

• To cause to experience great happiness or excitement.
• To experience great happiness or excitement.
• To take (someone) off the Earth and bring (them) to Heaven as part of the Rapture.
• To take part in the Rapture; to leave Earth and go to Heaven as part of the Rapture.
• To state (something, transitive) or talk (intransitive) rapturously.

Origin

• Borrowed from Middle French rapture, from Latin raptūra, future active participle of rapiō