ecstasy
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: medicine
sciences
Etymology: From Old French estaise (“ecstasy, rapture”), from Latin ecstasis, from Ancient Greek ἔκστασις (ékstasis), from ἐξίστημι (exístēmi, “to displace”), from ἐκ (ek, “out”) and ἵστημι (hístēmi, “to stand”).
Inflected forms:
form: ecstasies
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: ecstacy
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: exstacy
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: exstasy
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: extacy
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: extasy
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: ecstasies
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: ecstasying
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: ecstasied
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: ecstasied
pos: verb
tags: past
form: ecstacy
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: exstacy
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: exstasy
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: extacy
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: extasy
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
Senses:
gloss: Intense pleasure.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: This is the very ecstasy of love, / Whose violent property fordoes itself / And leads the will to desperate undertakings / As oft as any passion under heaven / That does afflict our natures.
He loved me well, and oft would beg me sing; / Which when I did, he on the tender grass / Would sit, and hearken even to ecstasy,
In fact, Tarzan had never killed for “pleasure,” nor to him was there pleasure in killing. It was the joy of righteous battle that he loved—the ecstasy of victory.
gloss: A state of emotion so intense that a person is carried beyond rational thought and self-control.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: an ecstasy of remorse
They were thrown into ecstasies of suspicion by finding that we possessed a French translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf.
gloss: A trance, frenzy, or rapture associated with mystic or prophetic exaltation.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: What! are you dreaming, Son! with Eyes cast upwards / Like a mad Prophet in an Ecstasy?
gloss: Violent emotion or distraction of mind; excessive grief from anxiety; insanity; madness.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
uncountable
examples: Come, let us leave him; in his ireful mood / Our words will but increase his ecstasy.
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, / That suck'd the honey of his music vows, / Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, / Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh; / That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth / Blasted with ecstasy.
gloss: The drug MDMA, a synthetic entactogen of the methylenedioxyphenethylamine family, especially in a tablet form.
pos: noun
tags: countable
slang
uncountable
gloss: A state in which sensibility, voluntary motion, and (largely) mental power are suspended, and the body is erect and inflexible.
pos: noun
tags: countable
dated
uncountable
examples: The instant I drew out my case of instruments, the lady roused herself from her ecstasy, and has never had a similar attack.
Ecstasy bears a strong resemblance to catalepsy: in both cases the patients, during the paroxysm, lose all connexion with the physical world, being deprived of sense and voluntary motion; but in ecstasy, associations of the most pleasing and enchanting nature are established with an ideal existence in an unknown region, which might perhaps be poetically designated the fairy land of an undescried Elysium.
In ecstasy the mind is absorbed with some fixed idea, generally of a religious character, and the patient becomes oblivious of surrounding events and objects.
gloss: To experience intense pleasure.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
gloss: To cause intense pleasure in.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: Ali Agha jumped up, seized the visitor by the shoulder, compelled him to sit down, and, ecstasied by the old man's horror at the scene, filled a tumbler, and with the usual grotesque grimaces insisted upon his drinking it.
Related words: ecstatic
Derived words: ecstasize
liquid ecstasy
Translations: