rapt

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin raptus, past participle of rapio (“to seize”).

adj

1. (not comparable, archaic) Snatched, taken away; abducted.
   From Oxford I was rapt by my nephew, Sir Edmund Francis Bacon, to Redgrove. 1626, Henry Wotton, letter to Nicholas Pey
2. (not comparable) Lifted up into the air; transported into heaven.
3. (comparable) Very interested, involved in something, absorbed, transfixed; fascinated or engrossed.
   The children watched in rapt attention as the magician produced object after object from his hat.
   1851-2, George W. M. Reynolds, The Necromancer, in Reynolds′s Miscellany, republished 1857; 2008, page 247, It was an enthusiasm of the most rapt and holy kind.
   Her expression grew more rapt; she paused as if she had lost the thread of the words and then spoke again, gazing far out over the hall as jugglers do in performing feats of balancing:[…]. 1906, Ford Madox Ford, The Fifth Queen; And How She Came to Court: Works of Ford Madox Ford, published 2011, unnumbered page
   1998, Derel Leebaert, “Present at the Creation”, in Derek Leebaert, editor, The Future of the Electronic Marketplace, page 24:
4. (comparable) Enthusiatic; ecstatic, elated, happy.
   He was rapt with his exam results.
   Creatures who navigate long-distance migrations — including the green turtles, wind birds, or great cranes — draw his most rapt commentaries. 1996, James Richard Giles, Wanda H. Giles, American Novelists Since World War II: Fifth Series, page 139
   2010, Michael Reichert, Richard Hawley, Reaching Boys, Teaching Boys: Strategies that Work—and Why, John Wiley & Sons, US, page 121, Even in the most rapt accounts of independent student work, there appears an appreciative acknowledgment of the teacher′s having determined just the right amount of room necessary to build autonomy without risking frustration and failure.
   One bloke I met in the pub was the owner of the local meatworks. He was rapt to have the Sudanese, and if 1600 more were coming – that was the rumour – well, he′d have been even more rapt. 2010, Caroline Overington, I Came to Say Goodbye, page 201
   2012, Greig Caigou, Wild Horizons: More Great Hunting Adventures, HarperCollins (New Zealand), unnumbered page, These are worthy aspects of the hunt to give some consideration to with the next generation, because market forces want us to get more rapt with ever more sophisticated gear and an algorithmic conquering of animal instinct.

verb

1. (obsolete) To transport or ravish.
   The Bards with furie rapt, the British youth among, Unto the charming Harpe thy future honor song 1612, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, song 6 p. 89
2. (obsolete) To carry away by force.
   1819-20, Washington Irving, The Spectre Bridegroom, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., reprinted in 1840, The Works of Washington Irving, Volume 1, page 256, His only daughter had either been rapt away to the grave, or he was to have some wood-demon for a son-in-law, and, perchance, a troop of goblin grandchildren.

noun

1. (obsolete) An ecstasy; a trance.
   the soul then is in rapt 1671, The Life Of The Mother S. Teresa
2. (obsolete) Rapidity.
   […] like the great exemplary wheeles of heaven, we must observe two Circles: that while we are daily carried about, and whirled on by the swinge and rapt of the one, we may maintain a naturall and proper course, in the slow and sober wheele of the other. 1646, Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 2nd edition, London: Edw. Dod & Nath. Ekins, published 1650, Preface