rapture

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)Extreme pleasure, happiness or excitement.

   “They went into raptures about the meal they'd had.”

   “Music, when thus applied, raises noble hints in the mind of the hearer, and fills it with great conceptions. It strengthens devotion, and advances praise into rapture[…]”

   “Sunderland’s right-back, Santiago Vergini, inadvertently gave Southampton the lead by lashing the ball into his own net in the 12th minute, and that signalled the start of a barmy encounter that had home fans in raptures and Sunderland in tatters.”

   “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. (alt-of, countable, uncountable)Alternative letter-case form of Rapture.

   “In the last week, believers have linked Charlie Kirk’s assassination to the rapture theory: some on TikTok have suggested that Kirk, who in death became a martyr for Christian nationalists and whose memorial service veered into religious revival territory, could be resurrected during the rapture.”

3. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)The act of kidnapping or abducting, especially the forceful carrying off of a woman.
4. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)Rape; ravishment; sexual violation.
5. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)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.

   “That 'gainst a rock, or flat, her keel did dash / With headlong rapture.”

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

6. (countable, uncountable)A spasm; a fit; a syncope; delirium.

   “Your pratling nurse Into a rapture lets her baby cry”

verb

1. (dated, transitive)To cause to experience great happiness or excitement.

   “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.

   “"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 […]"”

   “These fiction books told the story of some church people who were raptured but focused on the people who were not raptured.”

   “The third person raptured by God into heaven was Elijah […]”

   ““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. (intransitive, rare)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.

   “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.”

   “Pulling her leggings down over unshaven legs, she raptured "I'm dry!" to her audience.”

   “They're called angora with wonderfully long, soft fleece,” she raptured on about her first venture.”

name

1. In some forms of fundamentalist Protestant eschatology, a prophesied sudden removal of Christian believers from the Earth before the Tribulation or simultaneous with the second coming of Jesus Christ.

   “The end of the world will be at exactly 6 p.m. on May 21, 2011, says Camping, who along with his organization, Family Radio, are behind those billboards across the country forecasting the Rapture this Saturday. The Rapture, the Last Days, Armageddon and the Final Days of Judgment are all interchangeable. It's when God will destroy the Earth to show his love for humanity.”