Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Deeply moved or delighted; enraptured.
  • adjective Deeply absorbed; engrossed.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To seize or grasp; seize and carry off; ravish.
  • To transport as with ecstasy; enrapture.
  • Seized with ecstasy; transported; exalted; ecstatic; in a state of rapture.
  • noun A preterit and past participle of rap.
  • noun Transporting force or energy; resistless movement.
  • noun An ecstasy; a trance.
  • noun A carrying off; an abduction.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun obsolete An ecstasy; a trance.
  • noun obsolete Rapidity.
  • transitive verb obsolete To transport or ravish.
  • transitive verb obsolete To carry away by force.
  • imp. & p. p. of rap, to snatch away.
  • adjective Snatched away; hurried away or along.
  • adjective Transported with love, admiration, delight, etc.; enraptured.
  • adjective Wholly absorbed or engrossed, as in work or meditation.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective not comparable, archaic Snatched, taken away; abducted.
  • adjective not comparable Lifted up into the air; transported into heaven.
  • adjective comparable Very interested, involved in something, absorbed, transfixed; fascinated or engrossed.
  • adjective comparable Enthusiatic; ecstatic, elated, happy.
  • verb obsolete To transport or ravish.
  • verb obsolete To carry away by force.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective feeling great rapture or delight

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, carried away, from Latin raptus, past participle of rapere, to seize; see rep- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin raptor ("robber"), from Latin rapere ("seize")

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Examples

Comments

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  • I really love this word.

    Q: How was the Low concert last night?

    A: Man, I was rapt.

    September 27, 2007

  • 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

    October 20, 2010