How buoyant his heart! and so melted with tender thoughts, so raptured with imaginings! Baynard Rush Hall
An entire generation is raptured by the Netflix original, "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness." Rachel Mckenzie
2
: to cause (a Christian believer) to be taken up into heaven during the end-time
He clearly and persuasively argues from Scripture that Christians … will be raptured … Octavio Paz
The whole chapter is Paul's exhortation concerning Christ's resurrection. … He talks about those who will not die but be changed (raptured) and receive their glorified bodies. Tara Wentworth
… the faithful would have a reward better than eternal life after death. They'd skip death entirely, raptured … Joshua Rivera
ecstasy and rapture both suggest a state of trance or near immobility produced by an overpowering emotion.
ecstasy may apply to any strong emotion (such as joy, fear, rage, adoration).
religious ecstasy
rapture usually implies intense bliss or beatitude.
in speechless rapture
transport applies to any powerful emotion that lifts one out of oneself and usually provokes vehement expression or frenzied action.
in a transport of rage
Example Sentences
Noun We listened with rapture as the orchestra played. He listened to the wind in the trees, his eyes closed in rapture. Verb nature lovers will be raptured by the documentary's breathtaking cinematography
Recent Examples on the Web
Noun
The vertiginous composition incorporates tropes of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism, which, having become second nature to Howe, hardly vitiate the intensity of this particular religious rapture. Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker, 4 July 2022 Her story, a gay Black woman’s glorious rise—buoyed by an apocalyptic rapture—is the novel’s standout twist against convention. Hillary Kelly, The Atlantic, 16 June 2022 His London nocturnes put the hardest of hearts in rapture. Brian T. Allen, National Review, 9 July 2022 Mark Twain, a visiting Yankee not quite at Victoria’s court, grasped something deeper about the rapture of the crowd. Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, 21 Mar. 2022 Incomparable, that is, until 2007, when Michael Tilson Thomas matched his mentor on the rapture scale in a deeply probing performance of music seldom probed.Los Angeles Times, 13 July 2022 When Raffi finds transcendence playing soccer, that is when his father’s narrative of the encounter—imparting a valuable social and emotional skill to my son—falls away to the rapture of regular intimacy, the thrill of just being alive in the world. Phillip Maciak, The New Republic, 27 June 2022 If this is a rapture, the women wonder, why have the men been taken instead of them? Hillary Kelly, The Atlantic, 16 June 2022 The scene in which Cyrano ventriloquizes for Christian has never felt so erotic, not only because of Cyrano’s rapture in delivering it but also because of Roxane’s in receiving it.New York Times, 14 Apr. 2022
Verb
Monk’s story is peppered with supernatural details, talk of evil spirits and unaccountable noises, and even an extremely old nun who may or may not rapture herself to heaven daily. Mike Mariani, Slate Magazine, 22 Mar. 2017 At this time of year, Linnaeus had reached the farthest and most remote part of his journey, an alpine region, where he was driven to rapture by the diversity of flowering plants. James Prosek, New York Times, 16 May 2017 See More
Word History
Etymology
Noun
rapt + -ure; (sense 3) probably after the use of rapere in the Vulgate (1 Thessalonians 4:17) to translate Greek harpázein "to take hold of, seize, snatch up"