The Rapture

Yet another Rapture scare -- come and gone.  Whew.

Doesn't the relief just make you wanna sing?  Whoo! Alright! Yeah! Uh-huh!  This is the kind of Rapture I'm more into.

Anyone else interested in this word's etymology and how it got hijacked by a bunch of loonies?  Well...I won't hold out, here it is: 1. The state of being transported by a lofty emotion; ecstasy.;  2. An expression of ecstatic feeling. Often used in the plural.; 3. The transporting of a person from one place to another, especially to heaven.  [Obsolete French, abduction, carrying off, from rapt, carried away, from Old French rat, from Latin raptus; see rapt.]  Interesting how we've perverted "abduction" into an expression of ecstatic feeling.  Am I the only one who thinks that is kinda weird?  Of course, when the dictionary tells me to see another word, I DO IT!  So, here is rapt....

Apparently even the writers of the American Heritage Dictionary think this word's history is messed up.  It's a real treat to get an anecdote like this in the dictionary; you don't see them often: "Word History: One might be surprised to learn that rapt, a word used in describing states of deep delight or absorption, has a relative with an entirely different emotive force—rape. Now most often used to mean "to force someone to submit to sexual acts," rape once had a much broader application, as it meant "to seize, carry off." In fact, it was often used in positive and nonviolent contexts. From the Middle English period, we have examples of its being used to mean "to carry off to heaven from earth," as in "the visions of seynt poul wan [when] he was rapt in to paradys." As this quotation shows, rapt started out as the past participle of rape. As time went on, rapt became restricted to mental or emotional states, while rape developed a new past participle, raped, and became limited to criminal or violent acts."

Okay, this leaves me a little speechless at the moment.  I definitely did not know of this history....and it seems appropriate to leave things for reflection about what it says about the English-speaking psyche that the same word that means rape can also mean transport to heaven.  Yowzer, that's some messed up stuff.