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rapture

[ rap-cher ]

/ ˈræp tʃər /

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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.

OTHER WORDS FOR rapture

1 bliss, beatitude; transport, exaltation.

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OPPOSITES FOR rapture

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What Is The Origin Of The Word "Rapture"?

The key to understanding the wide-ranging rapture is its origin. So, where did it come from?

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Origin of rapture

First recorded in 1590–1600; rapt + -ure

synonym study for rapture

1. See ecstasy.

OTHER WORDS FROM rapture

rap·ture·less, adjective

WORDS THAT MAY BE CONFUSED WITH rapture

rapture , rupture

Words nearby rapture

rap sheet, rap someone's knuckles, rapt, raptor, raptorial, rapture, raptured, rapture of the deep, rapturous, raptus, RAR

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2021

How to use rapture in a sentence

It’s also a beginning, an open door to rapture, to finding your place in the world—and, sometimes, to creating new work that builds on the old.
Three New Music Documentaries Celebrate the Cosmic Connection Between Artist and Audience|Stephanie Zacharek|July 2, 2021|Time
McDonald’s commercials were among our earliest images of love, humanity, sexuality, and even rapture.
The McDonald’s Commercials That Live in Our Minds, Rent Free|MM Carrigan|December 18, 2020|Eater
However, a new set of neuroscience research findings suggests that losing track of time is also intimately bound up with creativity, beauty, and rapture.
The Neurology of Flow States - Issue 91: The Amazing Brain|Heather Berlin|October 14, 2020|Nautilus
A second coming of Rapture-minded evangelicalism is always one catastrophe, book, revival, or Nicolas Cage movie away.
The Rapture: The Theological Idea That Inspired ‘The Leftovers’|Matthew Paul Turner|July 6, 2014|DAILY BEAST

The book was optioned to HBO in 2011, around the time evangelist Harold Camping claimed The Rapture would occur—on May 21, 2011.
From ‘Lost’ to The Rapture: Creators Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta on HBO’s ‘The Leftovers’|Marlow Stern|June 24, 2014|DAILY BEAST
We can feel his sad cadences and the rapture of language in the Gettysburg Address.
Lincoln in Love|Jerome Charyn|February 14, 2014|DAILY BEAST
There is a phrase for the foreigners' rapture: mal d'afrique.
Susan Minot on Africa, Joseph Kony, and the Limits of Writing About Love|Lea Carpenter|February 10, 2014|DAILY BEAST
Most recently, Harold Camping went bust predicting that the Rapture would take place on May 21, 2011.
Sorry, Evangelicals, Syria Will Not Spur the Second Coming|Candida Moss|September 5, 2013|DAILY BEAST
Since that memorable night of mingled joy and despair, I thought not that such rapture awaited me again on earth.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 372, October 1846|Various
However, all seemed to do very well, and no one ever came into her room without some degree of rapture about Mr. Ernescliffe.
The Daisy Chain|Charlotte Yonge
Her face wore an expression of mystic rapture like that characterizing the features of some Chinese Buddhas.
Dope|Sax Rohmer
I longed to hear her and to see her always; I would have died in rapture at her side, but I was never fain to wed her.
Marguerite|Anatole France
It was the first time she had ever given him more than her hand to kiss, and the rapture repaid him for all.
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866|Various

British Dictionary definitions for rapture

rapture

/ (ˈræptʃə) /

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

Word Origin for rapture

C17: from Medieval Latin raptūra, from Latin raptus rapt 1

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012