ravishing
Americanadjective
adjective
Usage
What else does ravishing mean? Content warning: this article contains sexual language. Someone, usually a woman, called ravishing is "stunningly beautiful."To ravish someone historically meant to "plunder" or "violently seize and rape a woman," but in contemporary speech it refers to wanting passionate, consensual intercourse with a person.
Other Word Forms
- ravishingly adverb
Etymology
Origin of ravishing
Explanation
The adjective ravishing describes something or someone of exceptional beauty. If you say the dress your friend picked for the prom is ravishing, you mean it's beautiful and she looks beautiful in it. The adjective ravishing comes from the verb ravish, which is from the Latin word rapere, meaning to seize. In English, the verb meant to plunder or to carry away, and later a sense arose that meant to carry away in pleasure, or to seduce. So a dress that is ravishing is seductive or sexy––or, as the word became more popular, simply beautiful, as in "ravishing scenery."
Vocabulary lists containing ravishing
Call of Beauty: Synonyms for "Beautiful"
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The Odyssey
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The Namesake
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It emerged at the same time as Fauvism in painting and lasted a year longer than Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, which dazzled audiences with ravishing, often exotic visions, sets and costumes ablaze in jewel tones.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 21, 2025
Our critic called it “instructive, ravishing and thorough.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 9, 2025
It’s a ravishing movie about life’s rituals, hopefully ones that we’re fortunate enough to share in the company of other species.
From Los Angeles Times • May 25, 2024
The scenes that open this ravishing drama by Wang Xiaoshuai feel like pieces of a cryptic puzzle, gesturing evocatively at a whole that remains out of view.
From New York Times • Feb. 9, 2024
For country people, who only knew the dismantled tilting ground of Sir Ector’s castle, the scene which met their eyes was ravishing.
From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
