ecstasy - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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”).

ecstasy (countable and uncountable, plural ecstasies)

Ecstasy (MDMA) tablets

  1. Intense pleasure.
    Synonyms: rapture, euphoria
    Antonym: agony
    • c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:
      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 October 9 (first performance; Gregorian calendar), [John Milton], edited by H[enry] Lawes, A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634: […] [Comus], London: […] [Augustine Matthews] for Hvmphrey Robinson, […], published 1637, →OCLC; reprinted as Comus: […] (Dodd, Mead & Company’s Facsimile Reprints of Rare Books; Literature Series; no. I), New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1903, →OCLC, 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,
    • 1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 75:
      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.
  2. A state of emotion so intense that a person is carried beyond rational thought and self-control.
    an ecstasy of remorse
  3. A trance, frenzy, or rapture associated with mystic or prophetic exaltation.
    • 1692, John Dryden, Cleomenes, the Spartan Hero, a Tragedy, act i, 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.
  5. (slang) The drug MDMA, a synthetic entactogen of the methylenedioxyphenethylamine family, especially in a tablet form.
    Synonyms: MDMA, molly, (modern vernacular) E, eckie, ecky, XTC, X, thizz, (obsolete) empathy
  6. (medicine, dated) A state in which sensibility, voluntary motion, and (largely) mental power are suspended, and the body is erect and inflexible.
    • 1822 April, John Ware, “Dr. Reid's Essays on Hypochondriasis”, in The New-England Journal of Medicine and Surgery, volume 11, number 2, page 185:
      The instant I drew out my case of instruments, the lady roused herself from her ecstasy, and has never had a similar attack.
    • 1835 May 2, Andrew Ellis, “Clinical Lecture on a case of Catalepsy, Occurring in the Jervis-Street Hospital, Dublin”, in The Lancet, volume 2, page 130:
      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.
    • 1885, James Ross, Handbook of the Diseases of the Nervous System, page 344:
      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.

intense pleasure

intense emotion

trance associated with mystic or prophetic exaltation

recreational drug

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.

Borrowed from English ecstasy.

ecstasy m (uncountable, no diminutive)

  1. ecstasy (MDMA, recreational drug)

Unadapted borrowing from English ecstasy.

ecstasy n (indeclinable)

  1. ecstasy (synthetic entactogen of the methylenedioxyphenethylamine family, especially in a tablet form)

Unadapted borrowing from English ecstasy.

ecstasy m (usually uncountable, plural ecstasys)

  1. ecstasy (recreational drug)
    Synonym: êxtase
    Hypernyms: metilenodioximetanfetamina, midomafetamina