ecstasy

• extasy
• ecstacy (obsolete)

From Old French estaise (“ecstasy, rapture”), from Latin ecstasis, from Ancient Greek ἔκστασις (ékstasis), from ἐξίστημι (exístēmi, “I displace”), from ἐκ (ek, “out”) and ἵστημι (hístēmi, “I stand”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈɛk.stə.si/

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ecstasy (countable and uncountable, plural ecstasies)

Ecstasy (MDMA) tablets

1. Intense pleasure.
   • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene 1,

     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.

   • 1634, John Milton, Comus, lines 623-5,

     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,

2. A state of emotion so intense that a person is carried beyond rational thought and self-control.
   • 1938, George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, Chapter 14,

     They were thrown into ecstasies of suspicion by finding that we possessed a French translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf.

3. A trance, frenzy, or rapture associated with mystic or prophetic exaltation.
   • 1692, John Dryden, Cleomenes, Act IV, Scene I,

     What! are you dreaming, Son! with Eyes cast upwards / Like a mad Prophet in an Ecstasy?

4. (obsolete) Violent emotion or distraction of mind; excessive grief from anxiety; insanity; madness.
   • c. 1590, Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, Act I,

     Come, let us leave him; in his ireful mood / Our words will but increase his ecstasy.

   • c. 1599, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1,

     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.

5. (slang) The drug MDMA, a synthetic entactogen of the methylenedioxyphenethylamine family, especially in a tablet form.
6. (medicine, dated) A state in which sensibility, voluntary motion, and (largely) mental power are suspended; the body is erect and inflexible; but the pulse and breathing are not affected.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Mayne to this entry?)

• (the drug): MDMA, molly; (Modern Vernacular) E, eckie, ecky, XTC, X, thizz

• (intense pleasure): agony

• ecstatic

ecstasy (third-person singular simple present ecstasies, present participle ecstasying, simple past and past participle ecstasied)

1. (intransitive) To experience intense pleasure.
2. (transitive) To cause intense pleasure in.
   • 2011, Richard Francis Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, →ISBN:

     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.

• cytases

• xtc

Borrowed from English ecstasy.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɛk.stə.si/, /ˈɛk.sti.si/
• Hyphenation: ec‧sta‧sy

ecstasy m (uncountable)

1. ecstasy

ecstasy m (usually uncountable, plural ecstasys)

1. ecstasy (drug)