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Ravishment   Listen
noun
Ravishment  n.  
1.
The act of carrying away by force or against consent; abduction; as, the ravishment of children from their parents, of a ward from his guardian, or of a wife from her husband.
2.
The state of being ravished; rapture; transport of delight; ecstasy. "In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze."
3.
The act of ravishing a woman; rape.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ravishment" Quotes from Famous Books



... of thunder, the great rock falls asunder, He looks around in wonder, and with ravishment awhile, For the air his sense is chaining, with as exquisite a paining As when summer clouds are raining o'er a flowery Indian isle; And the faces that surround him, oh! how exquisite their smile, So free of mortal care ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy

... have made for myself fame. Everywhere in l'Europe zey will tell you of me. For the king of ze Englise I have made a dinner. Moi! I have invent ze sauce Ravignon. From nozzing at all—some meat scraps, some leetle greens—I produce ze dish ravishment." ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... of unutterable hate and rage, yet impotent to stay the ravishment of Hope Villa, Stern brought the machine round ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... part of a lengthy ballad in praise of the ladies of Florence. It was cast in an allegorical fashion, aiming to portray a pageant of fair women, each single verse seeking to picture some one of the many lovely ladies that in those days made Florence a very Venus Hill for the ravishment of the senses and the stirring of the blood. I wish with all my heart that I could set the whole of it down here, for it was most ingeniously fancied and handled, and it was not over difficult for the admirers of any particular beauty ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... hand, Loading the air with dumb expectancy, Suspending ere it fell a nation's breath, He smote, and clinging to the serious chords, With godlike ravishment drew forth a breath So deep, so strong, so fervid thick with love, Blissful yet laden as with twenty prayers, That Juno yearned with no diviner soul To the first burthen of the lips of Jove. Th' exceeding mystery of the loveliness Sadden'd delight, and with his mournful look, Dreary and ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... honey out of coloured flowers, Through the June day, with all its beam and scent, Heather of breezy hills, and idle bowers, Brushing soft doors of every blossoming tent, Filling gold thighs in drowsy ravishment, Pillaging vines on the hot garden wall, Taking of each small bloom its little rent— Poets must make ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne

... the appreciative eye and heart of one born with a deep and abiding love of the beautiful in nature, and for a time the sunset ravishment possessed him utterly. But the blurring of the fine-lined traceries and the fading of the silver and the gray into twilight purple broke the spell. The postponed resolve was the thing present and pressing. His mother was as nearly recovered ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... as instructive and enjoyable as possible. They should be pleasurable, full of attractive beauty and eloquent teachings. Picturesque groupings of natural objects, architectural surprises, sermons from the sculptor's chisel and the painter's palette, the ravishment of the soul by its superior senses, the refinement of mind and body by the sympathetic power of beauty,—these are a portion of the means which a due estimation of art, as an element of civilization, inspires the ruling ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... of three degrees for rape—the first to cover only ravishment by brutal violence and force; the second all the intermediate grades save statutory rape, which alone shall constitute the third degree. I am no firm believer in the justice of our age of consent, ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... that it was to bid me still be false and perjured, if these were the effects of it; 'If disobedience have such wondrous charms, may I,' said she, 'be still commanding thee, and thou still disobeying.' While thus we lay with equal ravishment, we heard a murmuring noise at a distance, which we knew not what to make of, but it grew still louder and louder, but still at a distance too; this first alarmed us, and I was no sooner persuaded to rise, but I heard a door unlock at the side of the bed, which was not that by which ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn

... me! What other fate awaits you, if this viper, which you are so ready to take into your bosom, should be warmed to life, but to groan like the Indians, slaves to the Spaniard; but to perish like the Indians, by heavy burdens, cruel chains, plunder and ravishment; scourged, racked, roasted, stabbed, sawn in sunder, cast to feed the dogs, as simple and more righteous peoples have perished ere now by millions? And what else, I say, had been the fate of Ireland had this invasion prospered, which God has now, by our weak hands, confounded and brought to naught? ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... Vera, busy in her chamber beautifying her charms for the ravishment of men from New York, waited with secret anxiety for the arrival of Stephen in his dressing-room. And whereas she usually closed the door between the bedroom and the dressing-room, on this occasion she carefully left it wide open. Stephen came at last. ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... airplanes flew over and kept close guard, but they could find no sign of a camp anywhere. No tents were in sight, though they searched the landscape carefully; and day after day, for want of something better to do they bombarded Bar-le-Duc. Every day some new ravishment of the beautiful city was wrought, new victims buried under ruins, new terror and destruction, until the whole region was in panic ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... which was intended by Providence to be equally distributed? Is it not that the sacred inheritance of all, which has tyrannously and impiously been ravished from the many for the benefit of the few, and which ravishment, from long custom of iniquity and inculcation of false precepts, has too long been basely submitted to? Is it not the duty of a father to preserve his only son from imbibing these dangerous and debasing errors, which will render him only one of a vile herd who are ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... steadily to a sweet compliance, and harmonious agreement to the will of God, in all his ways. Nay, to say a little more, there are sundry physical or natural contemplations of the works of God in scripture, but all these are divinely considered, in reference to the ravishment of the heart of man, with the wisdom, and power, and goodness of God. And this shows us the notable art of religion, to extract affection and obedience to God, out of all natural contemplations, and thus true divinity engraven on the ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... powers nobly applied—"I have never through life," said he in his old age, "had a chagrin, still less an hour of ennui. I waken in the morning with a secret pleasure at beholding the light. I gaze upon it with species of ravishment. All the day I am content. In the evening when I retire to rest, I fall into a sort of reverie which prevents the effort of thought, and I pass the night without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... do know; and that is that that worm had been due years and years. Robert F. had violated a monastery once; he had committed unprintable crimes since, and they had been permitted—under disapproval—but the ravishment of the monastery had not been forgotten nor forgiven, and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... A down-drawn trump of yellow jessamine A bee Thrust up its sad-gold body lustily, All in a honey madness hotly bound On blissful burglary. A cunning sound In that wing-music held me: down I lay In amber shades of many a golden spray, Where looping low with languid arms the Vine In wreaths of ravishment did overtwine Her kneeling Live-Oak, thousand-fold to plight Herself unto ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... great improvement, and the first line is, to my ear, very rich and grateful. As to the 'Female and Male,' I know not how to get rid of it; for that circumstance gives the recess an appropriate interest. I remember, Mr. Bowles, the poet, objected to the word ravishment at the end of the sonnet to the winter-garden; yet it has the authority of all the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... They recalled to me the accent of Haydn; there was in them and in the landscape a childlike joyousness, a naive gratitude, a radiant heavenly joy innocent of pain and sin, like the sacred, simple-hearted ravishment of Eve on the first day of her awakening in the new world. How good a thing is feeling, admiration! It is the bread of angels, the eternal food of cherubim ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... words, but the celestial harmony of the voices which sang them no tongue can describe: it took the ear of Ulysses with ravishment. He would have broken his bonds to rush after them; and threatened, wept, sued, entreated, commanded, crying out with tears and passionate imprecations, conjuring his men by all the ties of perils past which they had endured in common, by fellowship and love, and the authority which ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... destroyed, but it is an awful war doctrine that refuses to discriminate between the immediate and the eventual, the direct and the indirect, the important and the negligible advantage that would impoverish posterity to get a dime in cash. No military advantage is sufficient motive for such wanton ravishment. It is ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... the queen's toilet was one of ravishment to Madame de Noailles; for it was a daily glorification of that etiquette which she worshipped, and which Marie Antoinette abhorred. In that hour, its chains were on her hands and feet. She could neither ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... had gazed perhaps two minutes' space, Joanna, looking in my eyes, beheld That ravishment of mine, and laughed aloud. The Rock, like something starting from a sleep, Took up the Lady's voice, and laughed again! That ancient woman seated on Helm-crag Was ready with her cavern; Hammar-scar And the tall Steep of Silver-How sent ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... good which will really fill our souls and satisfy them to the uttermost, is not in us, but without us and above us, in the words which we use to set forth any transcending delight. Take three or four of these words—'transport,' 'rapture,' 'ravishment,' 'ecstasy,'—'transport,' that which carries us, as 'rapture,' or 'ravishment,' that which snatches us out of and above ourselves; and 'ecstasy' is very nearly the same, only drawn from the Greek. And not less, where a perversion ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... shake the house with every recurrence of the stroke. I had scarce time to master my alarm when the doctor returned, and almost in the same moment my mother appeared upon the threshold. But how am I to describe to you the peace and ravishment of that face? Years seemed to have passed over her head during that brief ride, and left her younger and fairer; her eyes shone, her smile went to my heart; she seemed no more a woman, but the angel of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... cheer, sunshine; cheerfulness &c. 836. treat, refreshment; amusement &c. 840; luxury &c. 377. mens sana in corpore sano [Latin: a sound mind in a sound body][Juvenal]. happiness, felicity, bliss; beatitude, beautification; enchantment, transport, rapture, ravishment, ecstasy; summum bonum[Lat]; paradise, elysium &c. ( heaven) 981; third heaven|!, seventh heaven, cloud nine; unalloyed happiness &c.; hedonics[obs3], hedonism. honeymoon; palmy days, halcyon days; golden age, golden ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... angelical to many a harp Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall By doom of battle, and complain that Fate Free Virtue should enthrall to Force or Chance. Their song was partial; but the harmony (What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?) Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet (For Eloquence the Soul, Song charms the Sense) Others apart sat on a hill retired, In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate— Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... States carry patience with respect to the aggressors, the fear of giving a signal of ruin, deference to the counsels lavished on them perhaps, so far as to refuse to return a violent attack, and to consent to the ravishment of their capital? It is hard to believe. If the South make the attack, the war will break out, and the border States will be ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... mother, who immediately made inquiries as to whether the gentleman in whose house her grandson lay ever had a son. She found he had one son, Rodolfo—as we call him—who was then in Italy; and on comparing the time he was said to have been abroad with that which had elapsed since her daughter's ravishment, she found them to agree very closely. She made all this known to her husband; and it was finally settled between the three that they should not move in the matter for the present, but wait till the will of Heaven had declared itself respecting the ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... wailful tune, and John prayed. If I were to give the prayer as he uttered it, I might make my reader laugh, therefore I abstain, assuring him only that, although full of long words—amongst the rest, aspiration and ravishment—the prayer of the cheerful, joke-loving cottar contained evidence of a degree of religious development rare, I ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... Symposium and everywhere. In Plutarch's Dialogue on Love, written five hundred years after Plato, one of the speakers ventures a faint protest against the current notion that "there is no gust of friendship or heavenly ravishment of mind," in the love for women; but this is a decided innovation on the traditional Greek view, which is thus brutally expressed by one of the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... plant now in splendid bloom, animated by the spirit of loveliness that presides over the law of reproduction, will soon be casting its seed and bringing its brief destiny to a close. Now all is coquetry, beauty, and ravishment. The rock-hiving bees, unconscious instruments of a great purpose, are yellow with pollen and laden with honey. They find more, infinitely more, nectar than they can carry away. The days are long, and every ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... big ball; all under a spreading tree again and with the high, oh so high white stone steps (mustn't they have been marble?) and fan-lighted door of the pinkish-red front behind me. I lose myself in ravishment before the marble and the pink. There were other houses too—one of them the occasion of the first "paid" visit that struggles with my twilight of social consciousness; a call with my father, conveying me presumably for fond exhibition (since ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... with it, but she feigned not to mark the flea and whipped harder. Then took she colour and coloured it saffron, and laid over it gold-leaf, so that it glittered and was an enticing sight; and the dish was of gold, crusted over with devices and patterns, and heads of golden monsters, a ravishment of skill in him that executed it, cumbrous with ornate golden workmanship; likewise there were places round the dish for sticks of perfume and cups carved for the storing of perfumed pellets, and into ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith



Words linked to "Ravishment" :   rape, assault, ravish, carnal abuse, violation, date rape, delight, sexual abuse



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