rapt

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin raptus (“seized, carried off”),^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} the past participle of rapiō (“to seize, carry off”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} used in post-classical Latin in British sources from the 12th century for someone rapt in an ecstasy.^[2] The American Heritage Dictionary refers the Latin verb to Proto-Indo-European *rep-,^[5] and Partridge compares Lithuanian aprėpiu (“I take by force”) and Albanian rjep (“I take, carry off”).^[8] Etymonline calls it essentially an alternative past participle of rape,^[4] and the Dictionary.com text a past participle of rapen (“to carry off”).^[9] In English it was first used as a passive past participle, then also as an active one and as a past tense; from these a stem rap, to affect with rapture, was inferred,^[2][7][4] though Skeat thought that in “What thus raps you”, in “Cymbeline”, the verb might be of English origin.^[10] Separately, rapt was turned into a verb unchanged, from 1571.^[2][4] The noun is taken from the Latin noun raptus, a seizing,^[2][7] though the Shorter Oxford allows French as well.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Carried up and transported into heaven: about 1390, in the Vision of St Paul in the Vernon manuscript,^[2] often with Paul's being caught up to heaven and paradise in 2 Corinthians 12 in mind.^[2] Barnhart has about 1390 as well, for someone carried away in body or spirit in an ecstatic trance,^[3] and Etymonline the late 14th century.^[4] Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories dates the earliest English uses to the 15th century.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The idea behind the first sense is a saint's vision of being lifted into heaven, in the body or in a dream.^[4] The word then kept the physical force of the Latin for some time: of a woman, abducted or raped (1447–1635),^[2] of a thing or person moved from one place to another (before 1500, now poetic),^[2] and even of someone taken by death, as in Washington Irving's "His only daughter had been rapt away to the grave" (1820).^[12][2] The spiritual sense weakened into "deeply absorbed", recorded from before 1500 in the OED,^[2] about 1500 in Etymonline^[4] and 1509 in Barnhart,^[3] first in phrases like rapt in contemplation; it has been suggested that the homophone wrapped helped this along.^[12] Delight followed in 1539,^[2] and since 1555 the form has been a true adjective, soon also describing a look or manner.^[2] The noun, "a trance" (to 1855) and "abduction, rape" (to 1693), has died out,^[2] and the verb survives only as a rare poetic word for "enrapture".^[2][11] Johnson (1755) has only these two, the noun as "a trance; an ecstasy" and the verb as Chapman's misuse of rap.^[13] Today the word has lost most of its old force: a rapt audience is attentive rather than carried away.^[12] Australian and New Zealand slang has gone its own way, with "excited by" (1979) and "overjoyed" (1985).^[14][2]

Timeline

• c. 1390 – carried up into heaven.^[2]
• c. 1425 – transported spiritually, beside oneself (obsolete by 1879); noun, a trance.^[2]
• 1447 – of a woman, abducted or raped (to 1635).^[2]
• before 1500 – deeply absorbed in a feeling or subject.^[2] Etymonline dates the sense to about 1500,^[4] Barnhart to 1509.^[3]
• before 1500 – carried from one place to another.^[2] Etymonline has the literal sense from the 1550s.^[4]
• 1539 – transported with joy.^[2]
• 1555 – adjective, absorbed, enthralled.^[2]
• 1571 – verb, to carry away by force (to 1658).^[2]
• c. 1577 – verb, to enrapture.^[2]
• 1581 – of a look or manner, showing rapture.^[2]
• 1710 – taken away by death (to 1858).^[2]
• 1979 – Australian slang, excited by someone.^[14]
• 1985 – Australian and New Zealand slang, overjoyed.^[14][2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Wholly absorbed or engrossed: The children watched the puppets in rapt silence.^[15][7][2]
2. Showing or coming from rapture: a rapt expression.^[15][2]
3. Carried away with joy or love; enraptured.^[7][2]
4. (Australia and New Zealand, informal) Very pleased: We were rapt with the result.^[2][14]
5. (poetic) Lifted up and carried away, as if by supernatural force.^[7][2]
6. (obsolete, 1447–1635) Abducted or raped.^[2][7][11]

Verb

1. (rare, poetic) To enrapture.^[2][11]
2. (obsolete, 1571–1658) To carry away by force.^[2][7][11]

Noun

1. (obsolete) A trance or ecstasy.^{[2][11][7][13]}
2. (obsolete, 1449–1693) Abduction or rape, chiefly in Scots.^[2][11]

Word family

• raptly
• raptness
• enrapt

Related words

• rapture
• enrapture
• rape
• rap
• rapid
• rapacious
• raptor
• ravish
• rapine
• wrapped

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster's Book of Word Histories, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
13. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b c d Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
15. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins