Rapturename

• 1

  ChristianityIn some forms of fundamentalist Protestant eschatology, a prophesied sudden removal of Christian believers from the Earth before the Tribulation or simultaneous with the second coming of Jesus Christ.

  • The end of the world will be at exactly 6 p.m. on May 21, 2011, says Camping, who along with his organization, Family Radio, are behind those billboards across the country forecasting the Rapture this Saturday. The Rapture, the Last Days, Armageddon and the Final Days of Judgment are all interchangeable. It's when God will destroy the Earth to show his love for humanity.
  • Brian J Dunn points out an aspect of the Rapture I hadn't considered: thousands, even millions, of new housing vacancies coming onto an already oversaturated market. If you notice your more religious neighbors go missing at 6 pm this evening, you should be prepared for the possibility that not only will Satan be freely walking the earth for seven years as 75% of humanity perishes in earthquakes, fires, and plague, but also that home values could fall as much as another 10%, leading to further weakening of economic growth, and great financial hardship for families with underwater mortgages.

rapturenoun/ˈɹæpt͡ʃəː/

• 1

  Extreme pleasure, happiness or excitement.

  • They went into raptures about the meal they'd had.
  • Music, when thus applied, raises noble hints in the mind of the hearer, and fills it with great conceptions. It strengthens devotion, and advances praise into rapture[…]
• 2

  obsoleteThe act of kidnapping or abducting, especially the forceful carrying off of a woman.

• 3

  obsoleteRape; ravishment; sexual violation.

• 4

  obsoleteThe 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.

  • That 'gainst a rock, or flat, her keel did dash / With headlong rapture.
  • With the rapture of great winds to blow / About earth's shaken coignes.
• 5

  A spasm; a fit; a syncope; delirium.

  • Your pratling nurse Into a rapture lets her baby cry

raptureverb/ˈɹæpt͡ʃəː/

• 1

  datedTo 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.
• 2

  datedTo experience great happiness or excitement.

• 3

  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 […]"
  • These fiction books told the story of some church people who were raptured but focused on the people who were not raptured.
• 4

  rareTo take part in the Rapture; to leave Earth and go to Heaven as part of the Rapture.

• 5

  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.
  • Pulling her leggings down over unshaven legs, she raptured "I'm dry!" to her audience.