rapture

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French rapture, from Latin raptūra, future active participle of rapiō (“snatch, carry off”).

noun

1. Extreme pleasure, happiness or excitement.
   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. 18 October 2014, Paul Doyle, “Southampton hammer eight past hapless Sunderland in barmy encounter”, in The Guardian
2. In some forms of fundamentalist Protestant eschatology, the event when Jesus returns and gathers the souls of living and deceased believers. (Usually "the rapture".)
3. (obsolete) The act of kidnapping or abducting, especially the forceful carrying off of a woman.
4. (obsolete) Rape; ravishment; sexual violation.
5. (obsolete) 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.
   With the rapture of great winds to blow / About earth's shaken coignes. 1888, James Russell Lowell, Agassiz, 6.1.21
6. A spasm; a fit; a syncope; delirium.

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. 2012, The Books They Gave Me: True Stories of Life, Love, and Lit, page 138
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 […]" 2001, Allan Appel, Club Revelation: A Novel, page 320
   These fiction books told the story of some church people who were raptured but focused on the people who were not raptured. 2007, Leon L. Combs, A Search For Reality, page 46
   The third person raptured by God into heaven was Elijah […] 2010, Gerald Mizejewski, Jerimiah Asher, Charting the Supernatural Judgements of Planet Earth, page 233
   “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?” 2011, Lexi George, Demon Hunting in Dixie
4. (rare, intransitive) 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. 1885, Edward Everett Hale, G.T.T.; or, The Wonderful Adventures of a Pullman, page 158
   Pulling her leggings down over unshaven legs, she raptured "I'm dry!" to her audience. 2003, Jessica Peers, Asparagus Dreams, page 75
   They're called angora with wonderfully long, soft fleece,” she raptured on about her first venture. 2003, Beverly Adam, Irish Magic, page 121