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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
ravish
verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ music to ravish the soul
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ I shall ravish you to my heart's delight.
▪ The women are jealous of it; the men want to ravish her.
▪ They had come home during the height of the disturbances to discover their teenage daughter being ravished by a young police officer.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ravish

Ravish \Rav"ish\ (r[a^]v"[i^]sh), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Ravished (-[i^]sht); p. pr. & vb. n. Ravishing.] [OE. ravissen, F. ravir, fr. L. rapere to snatch or tear away, to ravish. See Rapacious, Rapid, and -ish.]

  1. To seize and carry away by violence; to snatch by force.

    These hairs which thou dost ravish from my chin Will quicken, and accuse thee.
    --Shak.

    This hand shall ravish thy pretended right.
    --Dryden.

  2. To transport with joy or delight; to delight to ecstasy. ``Ravished . . . for the joy.''
    --Chaucer.

    Thou hast ravished my heart.
    --Cant. iv. 9.

  3. To have carnal knowledge of (a woman) by force, and against her consent; to rape.
    --Shak.

    Syn: To transport; entrance; enrapture; delight; violate; deflower; force.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
ravish

c.1300, "to seize (someone) by violence, carry (a person, especially a woman) away," from Old French raviss-, present participle stem of ravir "to seize, take away hastily," from Vulgar Latin *rapire, from Latin rapere "to seize and carry off, carry away suddenly, hurry away" (see rapid). Meaning "to commit rape upon" is recorded from mid-15c. Related: Ravished; ravishing.

Wiktionary
ravish

vb. 1 (context obsolete or archaic English) To seize and carry away by violence; to snatch by force. 2 (context transitive usually '''passive''' English) To transport with joy or delight; to delight to ecstasy.

WordNet
ravish
  1. v. force (someone) to have sex against their will; "The woman was raped on her way home at night" [syn: rape, violate, assault, dishonor, dishonour, outrage]

  2. hold spellbound [syn: enchant, enrapture, transport, enthrall, enthral, delight] [ant: disenchant]

Wikipedia
Ravish

Ravish may refer to

  • Ravish Desai, Indian actor and model
  • Ravish Kumar, I Indian TV anchor, writer and journalist
  • Ravish Malhotra, Indian air force officer
  • Ravish Siddiqi, Indian Urdu poet
  • Prithvi Singh Ravish,Indian human rights official

Usage examples of "ravish".

So they abode a little, and the more part of what talk there was came from the Lady, and she was chiefly asking Ralph of his home in Upmeads, and his brethren and kindred, and he told her all openly, and hid naught, while her voice ravished his very soul from him, and it seemed strange to him, that such an one should hold him in talk concerning these simple matters and familiar haps, and look on him so kindly and simply.

Fire, the Acceptor of sacrifices, ravishing away from them their darkness, give the light.

Bel, the present duchess of Hawkscliffe, considered one of the most ravishing women in Society, wore a gown of soft rose silk with long sleeves of transparent aerophane crepe.

The Countess, who was an Hungarian, received him with great kindness and affability, and her son was ravished with the prospect of enjoying such a companion.

Language, he understood, was chiefly important for the beauty of its sounds, byk its possession of words resonant, glorious to the ear, by its capacity, when exquisitely arranged, of suggesting wonderful and indefinable impressions, perhaps more ravishing and farther removed from the domain of strict thought than the impressions excited by music itself.

I had not seen her for seventeen years, but she looked as beautiful and ravishing as ever as she came forward on the stage.

She came into my room, wished me good day, asked me what kind of a night I had spent, if I wanted anything, and the sight of her grace and beauty and the sound of her voice so ravished me, that I determined to seek safety in flight.

Above all those beauties, I could see the shape of two globes which Apelles would have taken for the model of those of his lovely Venus, and the rapid, inequal movement of which proved to me that those ravishing hillocks were animated.

The more innocent I found her to be, the less I could make up my mind to possess myself of that ravishing prey.

My vagrant fancy shewed me her naked form, all seemed ravishing, and yet I thought that though she might inspire a passing fancy she could not arouse a durable affection.

Veronique looked ravishing in her scanty attire, and as she laughed I could not be angry with her.

The Caermelor Road had threaded its way through farmlands, past garths and granges, crofts and byres, alongside hedged meadows where cattle pondered or shepherds with crosiers in hand followed their flocks, past pitch-roofed haystacks, ponds teeming with ducks, tilled patches of worts in leafy rows, and burgeoning fields of einkorn, emmer, and spelt where hoop-backed reapers toiled, by vineyards glutted with overflow of clammy juice and moss-trunked orchards already ravished, the last windfalls rotting on the ground, their sweet decay choired by sucking insects.

The ear of mortal never heard such a delirious, delicious, such a crystalline, argentine, ivory-smooth, velvety-soft, such a ravishing, such an enravished tumult of sweet voices.

You must know, too, that, loving you passionately, I must not suppose that it is to be a surprise that I am indebted for my happiness in the enjoyment of the most ravishing sights, for if I owed it only to mere chance I should be compelled to believe that any other man in my position might have had the same happiness, and such an idea would be misery to me.

She stated in her complaint that, having decoyed her child to the Zuecca, I had abused her by violence, and she adduced as a proof that her daughter was confined to her bed, owing to the bad treatment she had received from me in my endeavours to ravish her.