- rapt (adj.)
- c.1400, "carried away" (in an ecstatic trance), from Latin raptus, past participle of rapere "seize, carry off" (see rape (v.)). Sense of "engrossed" first recorded c.1500. As a past participle adjective, in English it spawned the back-formed verb rap "to affect with rapture," which was common c.1600-1750. The figurative sense is from the notion of "carried up into Heaven (bodily or in a dream)," as in a saint's vision.