Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. Past participle of rap2.
- adj. Deeply moved or delighted; enraptured: listened to the speaker with rapt admiration.
- adj. Deeply absorbed; engrossed: was rapt in thought all evening.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A preterit and past participle of rap.
- Seized with ecstasy; transported; exalted; ecstatic; in a state of rapture.
- To seize or grasp; seize and carry off; ravish.
- To transport as with ecstasy; enrapture.
- n. Transporting force or energy; resistless movement.
- n. An ecstasy; a trance.
- n. A carrying off; an abduction.
Wiktionary
- adj. not comparable, archaic Snatched, taken away; abducted.
- adj. not comparable Lifted up into the air; transported into heaven.
- adj. comparable Very interested, involved in something, absorbed, transfixed; fascinated or engrossed.
- adj. comparable Enthusiatic; ecstatic, elated, happy.
- v. obsolete To transport or ravish.
- v. obsolete To carry away by force.
GNU Webster's 1913
- imp. & p. p. of rap, to snatch away.
- adj. Snatched away; hurried away or along.
- adj. Transported with love, admiration, delight, etc.; enraptured.
- adj. Wholly absorbed or engrossed, as in work or meditation.
- n. obsolete An ecstasy; a trance.
- n. obsolete Rapidity.
- v. obsolete To transport or ravish.
- v. obsolete To carry away by force.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. feeling great rapture or delight
Etymologies
- From Latin raptor ("robber"), from Latin rapere ("seize") (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, carried away, from Latin raptus, past participle of rapere, to seize. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Mrs Barnum sat before him, her face lit by the evening light that shone in from the single window in the room, her expression rapt – as if she were looking upon divinity.”
“The cast will be reunited and America will be able to follow their “lives” in rapt horror/fascination for a further 12 episodes starting in mid-to-late summer of this year.”
DVR This: JERSEY SHORE gets a 2nd Season; PARKS AND RECREATION Renewed for a Third – Collider.com
“Still, his nervousness proved to be unwarranted as he kept the audience in rapt attention with his loose, off the cuff demeanor and laconic sense of humor (it didn't hurt that BodyWorld is very funny; Shaw's voices for his characters were hilariously fitting).”
“Ethical implications aside, his lectures were generously garnished with anecdotes that held his wide-eyed freshmen audience in rapt attention.”
“The kind of movie she loved so much, without a Hollywood plot or orthodox three-act structure, but episodic, with characters that felt real and whom you loved being around, and who kept you in rapt attention wanting to know who they would bring into their orbit next and what random experiences they might have.”
The Celebrity I’ll Miss the Most: Celebrating Linda Posell « The Blog at 16th and Q
“They spend time in rapt attention, and the drawing is born.”
“Sir Ian McKellen and the members of England's Royal Shakespeare Company sat in rapt attention inside an inner-city Los Angeles classroom.”
The Huffington Post: Classroom Heroes: Rafe Esquith's Mission To Share Shakespeare With His Students
“And I suppose his women do stare at him in rapt attention.”
“Is it part of the job description of the scholar nowadays that he hold his students in rapt attention as he teaches them that "the experiences of life can be reconstituted and made available as beauty and solace, to help us live our lives"?”
“Almost ninety years later, the critic Ernest Newman recalled: 'Elgar told me that as a boy he used to gaze from the school windows in rapt wonder at the great trees in the park swaying in the wind; and he pointed out to me a passage in Gerontius in which he had recorded in music his subconscious memories of them.' —”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘rapt’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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apt
apt, rapt, inapt, leapt, aptitude, chapter, capture, rapture, velociraptor, captivate, captious, caption and 77 more...
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Past tense in -t.
Some words are always like this. Some only when British or archaic. Some are just fun.
built, spent, bent, spilt, spoilt, ruint, thought, caught, brought, wisht, pent, spelt and 74 more...
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SAT words
tergiversate, cymotrichous, vigilance, wince, consternation, cower, neutralize, euphony, cacophony, misanthrope, bibliophile, kleptomania and 81 more...
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Rap-ture
rap, wrap, rapture, raptor, trap, grapple, krispy krap donuts, crappie, Irapuato, stenograph, graph paper, xerography and 11 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6689 more...
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Shakespeare.02
sprite, nonpareil, liege, transpose, benison, vantage, disburse, rapt, interdiction, harbinger, sheathe, purge and 3 more...
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Really Cool Four-Letter Words
I marvel at the amazing variety of four-letter words in the English language. And that's not even counting really common (to me) words like fuck.
ibis, pelf, sofa, iota, oboe, lava, icon, sped, puha, pulp, puma, kyat and 150 more...
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Necessary?
"Words are very..."
The above was the original description for this list. Unfortunately, it doesn't convey much about the list contents.
I'm leaving you to draw your own conclusions abo...supererogation, fruitcake, unbeknownst, melifluous, bane, cavy, unnecessary, lyrical, question, undertow, weapon, arduous and 200 more...
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ADW2
nudnik, temper, intercalate, cleave, scowl, chapfallen, malapropos, disport, annals, paean, paradisiacal, whet and 362 more...
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miltonic
liberty, froth-becurlèd, host, huge-bellied, aghast, rills, gladsom, wrathfull, ordain, thunder-clasping, ruddy, warble and 264 more...
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cloudjuice's Words
schadenfreude, sordid, promulgate, erratic, erroneous, amalgamate, sesquipedalian, incongruous, psychosis, etymology, simulacrum, serendipity and 988 more...
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My List
A list of words that I have generated over time.
cairn, cacodaemoniacal, abash, abject, abjure, abstemious, abhor, abnegate, abnegation, abscond, abstruse, acclivity and 702 more...
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just words.
coquette, solecism, peripherally, recrudescence, viscid, turpitude, sententious, light-heeled, interminably, unflappable, palpably, solicitous and 215 more...
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daleshipley's Words
brinksmanship, contravene, teleological, sartorial, conventicle, habiliment, tendentious, acrimonious, ontology, epistemology, impugn, dysphasia and 219 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for rapt.
milosrdenstvi But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on,
So much the gathering darkness charmed: we sat
But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie,
Perchance upon the future man: the walls
Blackened about us, bats wheeled, and owls whooped,
And gradually the powers of the night,
That range above the region of the wind,
Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up
Through all the silent spaces of the worlds,
Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens.
Tennyson, The Princess Oct 19, 2010
82times I really love this word.
Q: How was the Low concert last night?
A: Man, I was rapt. Sep 26, 2007